I'll go out on a limb here, Daniel, and please forgive me if you get better input elsewhere. Yes, I know it's a little bind moggling.
First off, you might try using G or C as your tonic since more of your average lute music is in those scales. A is a little problematic since it often requires an G# leading tone (instead of playing open 1st or 6th course open. Ok, I'm assuming you have a G lute). Yes there is some great lute music in A but it requires a lot of barred 2nd and 4th fret chords. Yucko. I'm not familiar w/ Silberman but my little Korg offers Vallotti (and only w/ a C tonic--great for G lutes, ok for D lutes but lousy for F# lutes) and this is very close to 1/6. What it eventually gives me is a narrow interval between my open and 4th frets --notice how your fretting system requires the 4th fret closer to the nut? And also a narrow interval between the 3rd and 4th courses --also a major 3rd. (If you'd like to see a real interval of a major third in action, play a harmonic just above the 4th fret on a regular steel fretted instrument (ie, equal tempered). Notice how the node really wants to be closer to the nut? That's where your perfect major 3rd really wants to be and would represent 1/4 meantone. Alas, we can't really have that because it would give us no modulation room so we wiggle it a smidge bridgewards and call it 1/6 meantone. But try moving your lute's 4th fret right under the node and see how it sounds--there are times when it's very very nice!) It makes up for this by making the 4ths (the other adjacent open courses, eg, the open to 5th frets) imperceptively wide. If you've arranged your frets according to one of the many charts available and chosen Aflats instead of G#s then you'll notice that almost all your major 3rds are narrower in C major than in equal temperment. G major too....except that damned 1st fret on the 4th course! Thus that inelegant but useful tastino fix. This probably won't answer your entire question but it's a different way of looking at than dividing umpteen octaves by something or another which I can't keep straight either. I see that Ed D. has also written in so I'll stop right here and let him take over... cheers, Sean At 06:58 PM 9/18/04, you wrote: >I am trying to understand the meantone -1/6 tuning system which I do >agree makes the lute sound better in most of the Ren repertoire that I >play. I am a bit confused about the actual tuning process. I have read > >http://home.planet.nl/~d.v.ooijen/lgs/meantone.html > >I have used the fret positions and tried to tune the open strings by ear >which for me is unfortunately always a struggle. I assume, since you >start by tuning to the A string to A 440 that the "tonic" of this >meantone is A. > >If I use a program like chromatic tuner [mac users can try for free at > >http://homepage.mac.com/katsura/shareware.html#CHTN ], it is easier for >me because it inputs the frequency via a microphone and I can visually >see the tone deviation. I get very different readings for the open >strings, especially the F strings, than tuning with the first method. I >am using "Silbermann (-1/6) with tonic A440. Even worse, using a tone >generator such as >http://www.zib.de/vgp/unheard/materialien/externeApplets/music_apps/ >javatuner/acc.html >actually gives me different readings in chromatic tuner. > >So my questions are: > >1) Have I misunderstood something in the process? Should I be using a >different tonic? > >2) What keys work and what keys don't in this setup (or is the >appropriate question chords rather than keys)? > >3) Does anyone use a different process to tune in this system? > >TIA > >DS > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
