Sorry if this is long and boring - I am warning at the beginning that it will be, so if you don't want to be bored for a long time delete this now.
Alden commented that 'We have moved on from that sound". I think that might be an overstatement - some have moved on from that sound. Maybe the professional HG industry has moved on from that sound. But there is still a lot of interest in the old sounds and methods. They are not all hideous to everyone's ears. I, as well as others, have a real musical tie with the medieval music, or music that strongly evokes medieval imagery and feelings. Modern jazz, 20th century pastorals, that type of music just doesn't inspire like the earliest recorded Celtic or English folk music, or the sonorous latin hymns and chants. Sure, I enjoy technically interesting music, like the stuff from Prototyp, but I am not out to become that musician - I would rather listen to it than try to play it. I like the sound of the Finnish folk players with nyckleharp and gurdy, lyre and kantele (not the modern concert instrument, the old runsinging stuff). I also don't think you have to be a poor musician or play a poor instrument to do that music. But you do have to remain pure to the instruments that were, and not the instruments that are. A great modern instrument no matter how you disguise it will play a great modern version of what was. To get what really was, you need to play on that type of instrument. I am trying my best to capture that sound - from the point of view that the elder Stradivarius (not the youngers) was a highly skilled instrument maker using exceptional techniques and first-rate materials and created in late medieval times instruments that were, and still are, exceptional. A first-rate violin builder recently told me that amateurs today can get an instrument that is 90% to a Strad. Sure, it won't have all the essence and nuance of a Strad, but if it was presented in period, these people would likely be recognized as near masters. That is, of course, understanding that the ability we have to choose and prepare materials, the tools we can use for building and setup, the combined knowledge that we have access to all work to allow us to create something more than the average village builder would make, but not stray far from the possible sound of a period instrument. The gurdy has undergone much more evolution in the last half century than it did in hundreds of years before - capos and pickups and new string materials, and composites and precision machining techniques available to the average builder. But the instrument has fundamentally changed as well - the early 19th century instruments have a different color and tone and playability than the new instruments. Yes, the newer instruments are by far accoustically better - they top every measurable and quantitative standard. But what about the best instruments from the early days? Were they all poor? Did not one of them have a sound a modern performer would love, not just find useful in certain rare circumstance? I admit, I will use a lathe to create the axle and wheel setup for my project. But I will likely use it in a manner quite familiar in the 1500s with the early continuous rotation metalworkers and pewterers lathes. I will avoid if I can using threads, instead choosing keyways and pins, and using lapped joints common in medieval clockmaking, and borrowing bearing construction and usage from that occupation as well. There were some wonderfully precise machines made in the middle ages, and I believe that while it would not be as common as today, there were wonderfully precise and tonally excellent instruments of all types made during the period. It is my desire to make an instrument that could have been made at that time - with materials and technologies known at that time, avoiding all the modern adjuncts and improvements. I have no interest at all in owning a great modern gurdy - I am not after the finest performance, the most modern, clean, perfect sound that can be generated. I am after a sound that evokes a time past, a sound that sounds correct even if foreign to modern ears. I am not trying to emulate the human voice, or to satisfy the modern musical elite - I find they limit themselves far too much in what they allow themselves to appreciate. I want to be connected to the instrument and to the setting, to play while Gypsies dance, to mourn the loss of a fallen archer in song, ! to stand in awe as I crank my simple sinphone behind and in support of the Gregorian chants of the brothers at the monastery. Just as I prefer my rebec to any violin, and I don't WANT to build a rebec with a carved top and sound post and all the rest, and as I prefer my flat top, flat back citole to any modern mandola or bouzouki, I want to have a good representation of the best gurdy that could be made in period. That is what I am driving for. I know it will fall short of the modern instruments, but only by design, not by craftsmanship, setup, or skill. It will, I hope, be a Stradivarius of medieval gurdies. (And yes, here's the kicker. Most of the instrument builders and restorers and set-up guys I know say the same thing - it was likely that Strads came out of the shop sounding like dog doodoo. We have no idea if Strad knew how to set up an instrument or if he just knew how to build one that was beautiful. But everyone I have talked to who has had an experience working on one or more said that the signs were that the instruments were not well set up out fo the shop, and that it took many years, and many trips to the experts, to make the best sounding strads today sound like they do. So maybe the point is moot. But I will try anyway, and when it is done it will be hauled out in the gales and the sun and the rain, and people will dance to it and cry to it (hopefully only when I intend them to cry, not all the time) and dogs and cats will run from it and mother-in-laws will stop visiting because it resides in the house, and the spirit will come upon it an bless it and me and t! here will be years of enjoyment of it and someone 200 years from now will be refurbishing it and playing it as well. Hopefully.) It might be a long ride down the wrong road, but it should be scenic and fun and show me sights most people will never see. Chris
