G'day you beauts... Goran wrote: What about a duet for lute and Didgeridoo anyone?
Yes, I think it could work. IMHO, the didgeridoo is a woodwind instrument. The players lips are the original 'reed' and with 'circular-breathing' you have a thorough-(sp?)-bass with which to add your lute-continuo. Maybe next time, Michael, or Martin? I was almost tempted to bring one back from Oz. But, I thought about my dog. The flamin' gallah nearly destroyed our vacuum-cleaner pipe when I 'played' that !! Best Wishes Ron (UK) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Murphy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lute List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: 24. november 2003 09:56 Subject: Re: fretted ud ? | Shakespeare said it. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any | other name would smell as sweet;" | | On the whole every instrument we know has been invented in every culture (I | think the Australian aborigine Digereedoo may be an exception). The wind | instruments start with the willow whistle (found in caves from 50,000 years | ago), or perhaps with the "end blown" flute. Whatever, early man discovered | that by "splitting" the wind of his breath he could make a sound in a hollow | tube - and then discovered that he could vary the sound by making holes in | the tube to change the effective length. And he discovered it independently | at different times and different places, as he did most other basic | instrumental principles. That split stream of air gives us the organ, the | penny whistle, the side blown flute, and etc. At some later point (before | Roman times if we are to believe the Hollywood extravaganzas with Roman | trumpets) he also discovered the way to make an air column in a tube make | sound using a mouthpiece and the compression of the lips to vary it. | | We need not spend much time on drums, even chimps beat on a hollow log. But | the skin covered ring of wood is almost universal to all cultures. | | Strings, now we come to the heart of the matter - or at least our hearts. It | is probably a good guess to say that the hunter's bow was developed before | the stringed instrument, after all food is yet more important than | aesthetics (although man doesn't live by bread alone). And again we come to | a weapon developed independently in most parts of the world. The archer may | have found a pleasure in the "twang", and played with it by bending the bow | to change the tension while entertaining himself or his buddies. | | Now I make Murphy's categories of stringed instruments, I only see three | (comments welcomed). There is the family of the harp and the lyre in which | there are separate strings for each note with the pitch varying by length - | and the string pulling directly against the sounding surface. I think that | the various forms of harp are the only survivors of that category. Then | there is the family of instruments where the strings are parallel to the | sounding surface and pressing on it across a bridge, and these can be | divided into two families. The psaltery and zither family where there are | multiple strings, one for each pitch. And the family of "stopped" strings | where the pitch is defined by shortening the string with a finger. | | All of the above have been independently developed in multiple cultures | (unless one wants to assume a universal expansion of mankind in very recent | times). But then they have cross pollinated as the world became smaller. | | So it seems to me that the discussion of the fretted ud is a bit irrelevant | unless we want to assume that the samisen and the sitar and all other | stopped instruments come from one very inventive source. My guess is that | the idea of stopping the string came independently, and the idea of frets | came in the same way. The fret is an acceptance of a specific scale as | uniform, and that is where cultures diverge, but only in relatively modern | times. It is only in the last several hundred years that our octave scale | was developed, the tetra chord and the (whats its name) Do to Sol scale were | standard not so long ago. Then the octave scale got mixed up with mean | tempering and equal tempering, but they are quite recent in the scale (pun | intended) of history. | | The native American wind flute uses a different scale, but it is still a | whistle. The trumpet and the trombone sound quite different, but they are | both brass ( I think that is defined by the use of a mouthpiece). And I left | out the reeds entirely in this discussion, a major error but I'll not go | back to guess at their origin. | | It has been said on this list that the name Ud comes from a word for wood, | but I doubt that the shape of the ud was make by bending wood originally. | Probably the use of a natural bowl, a tortoise shell or a half a gourd, and | what did they call it then? And is it possible that some early musician used | that gourd with a neck attached and added frets, and what did he call that? | | In T.S. Eliot's "Fragment of an Agon" Sweeney says "I gotta use words when I | talk to you". I wouldn't fret over the names of the instruments that have | been fretted. Nor would I concern myself with the details of definition, | unless trying to describe a particular instrument of a particular period. | And then it might be better yet to use a family name with a few adjectives. | I have two harps, a 22 string cross strung and a 26 string double strung. | Any harpist can picture the instruments from that brief description. (The 22 | cross actually has 36 strings, and the 26 double 52, but the harpist would | know that). | | What's in a name. | | Best, Jon | | | ----- Original Message ----- | From: "drebuffa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Michael Stitt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Cc: "lute list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 4:14 PM | Subject: Re: fretted ud ? | | | > The turkish 'ud has never been fretted. same is for any idan from Morocco | to | > Iraq. | > The only fretted "lute" they havein Turkey is the Lauta which is different | > and has a longer neck and different tuning. | > Only long neck lutes, like the tanbur, or the baglama , saz, and cura in | > Turkey as well as the Buzuq (in Siria and Lebanon) the Iranian tar, setar | > and many similar long necked lutes from Greece to Turkmenistan, have | always | > been fretted. | > davide rebuffa | > | > ----- Original Message ----- | > From: "Thomas Schall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | > To: "Michael Stitt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | > Cc: "lute list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | > Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 7:23 PM | > Subject: Re: fretted ud: still exists - here | > | > | > > Hi Michael, | > > | > > it seems as if the turkey has reimported the european lute (with frets) | > > which was to a certain degree spread over the osmanian empire (and in | > > india). I think they coexist together with the arabian form of the ud | > > without frets and are slightly different built. | > > Daniel would surely be able to tell more about it (I'm just starting to | > > deal with this topic). | > > As far as I know uds with frets are not common in northern africa. | > > | > > Best wishes | > > Thomas | > > | > > Am Son, 2003-11-23 um 18.32 schrieb Michael Stitt: | > > | > > > On Saturday my wife and I wandered into a Turkish music shop here in | oz | > to buy an ud CD. I asked the Turkish born shop keeper for the best solo | ud | > player of Turkey and he gave me a recording of Ergin Kizilay playing solo | ud | > music. I don't know whether he is `the best' ud player of Turkey - but | the | > performance and recording quality is fantastic -with the musical | > composition characterised by a Spanish tinge but in reality totally | Arabic. | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > But that was not the interesting part. On the back of the CD it shows | > the instrument and yes it has frets! I told my Lebanonese wife that this | is | > unusual and her reply was `what do you mean unusual.all uds HAVE frets' I | > informed this was not the case and it seems that this generialisation does | > appear to be wrong. | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > On my newly created ud page I have included a photograph of a ud | player | > playing a unfretted instrument. It's a bit dark and probably not clear | > enough from the original to see a non-fretted instrument. The point IS | not | > all uds are fretted. Here is the picture: | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > http://bachplucked.com/ud/ | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > Regards, | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > Michael. | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > | > > > --------------------------------- | > > > Do you Yahoo!? | > > > Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now | > > > -- | > > | > > -- | > > Thomas Schall | > > Niederhofheimer Weg 3 | > > D-65843 Sulzbach | > > 06196/74519 | > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] | > > www.lautenist.de / www.tslaute.de/weiss | > > | > > -- | > | > | > | > | > | |
