Dear Edward, Many thanks for your nice scherzo.
I suspect one or two lutenetters missed my reference to an old joke in my last e-mail. I shall spell it out in case anyone overlooked it: Question: What do you get when you drop a grand piano down a pit shaft? Answer: A flat minor (a flat miner). -o-O-o- On the question of chord shapes, I think it is useful to be familiar with the commonest shapes: Major chords __a__d__c__a__a__c__c__e__ __b__a__d__c__a__a__c__c__ __b__b__d__d__c__a__e__c__ __c__a__a__c__c__b__e__d__ __d__c_____a__c__c__e__e__ _____d________a_____c_____ Eb Bb F C G D A E Minor chords _b__a__a__c__c__e__ _d__b__a__a__c__c__ _d__d__b__a__d__c__ _a__c__c__a__e__c__ ____a__c__c__e__e__ _______a_____c_____ Fm Cm Gm Dm Am Em Lute music tends to avoid lots of full chords like these, because a thin texture where just two or three notes are selected, sounds clearer, especially in a polyphonic piece. With a pair of strings for each course, there are too many strings on the lute to make strumming as effective as it is on the guitar. There are, of course, many alternative ways of playing chords, and lute players are required to play inversions and suspensions too. To show the complexity of thinking in terms of chord shapes on the lute, one has only to look at pp. 192-6 of Thomas Mace's _Musick's Monument_ (London, 1676). He gives as many different ways of playing the same chord as he can, so, for example, he gives 168 different ways of playing a chord of A in the Flat Tuning. In conclusion I would say that it is important to be familiar with the commonest chord shapes, and to be able to identify those chords, even when only two or three notes of a chord are to be played at any one time. There is far more to lute playing than just learning a few chords, but it certainly helps one's understanding of lute music, if we can identify chords (whether clearly stated or just implied) and spot harmonic progressions. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Edward Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 12:47 PM Subject: [LUTE] Lute Chord Confusion > On the lighter side of this discussion, I have a joke about chords: > > C, E-flat and G go into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, but we > don't serve minors." So E-flat leaves, and C and G have an open fifth > between them. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
