I suppose it's worth revisiting this subject since I just acquired a T-122 myself and have had a chance to play with it a bit.
I've set up lutes using Dowland's Rule of 18, and for Dowland it works very well, indeed. But when I have to play with other instruments, it is good to be able to set the frets appropriately. Some folk I play with use 6th comma mean tone exclusively, some use (gasp) ET12. Some don't bother to tune their frets at all, and when I can get a chance to do it for them, it's nice to be able to do it quickly and accurately. A good tuner is very handy in such cases. At home, I take an A from whatever is good (i.e., handy) and tune everything out by ear. I retune as I practice, no problem. But at home, I live a life that is much more relaxed than when I'm out in the 'Real World'. If I'm practicing lute, the rest of the family is quiet enough that I can hear what I'm doing. Last night was Collegium rehearsal. Because of my work schedule and the distance from home to the college, I arrived with 10 minutes to tune. I tuned the mock ren-lute using an "open tuning" in the T-122 that I programmed during the day. The mock-theorbo and 7-string viol were done with the chromatic tuner. Worked pretty well, but then I had to put everything into the cases to move into the rehearsal room. Once out of the cases, they started out detuned because of the way the instruments are held by the cases, but that only took a few moments to retune using the T-122. Here, however, the auto setting wasn't capable of 'seeing' the strings at all, so I manually chose the notes to tune and touched up by ear. >From then-on, it was a quick check everytime the ensemble stopped to pull things back into tune. Here in the fickle north, we get a mix of temperature and humidity changes that are sometimes amazing: when I tuned in the study area at the end of the hall, it was about 68 and dry. The rehearsal space was hot and very humid, and I was sweating like mad from dragging the cases around, so it was probably even more humid in my local area. If you play gut strings, you're well advised to loosen them between sessions (whether rehearsals or just practice) especially because, in the hurricane-alternating-with-lovely-weather season, strings can change between slack and breaking-strain while the instrument sits in the case. Gut strings have wonderful properties of always being ready to have to stretch-in again after being loosened for a while, too. Because everyone else was checking their tuning at the same time, having a tuner that was sensitive and easily set to the strings I was checking was a real plus... and I could also see how the recorders were changing as they warmed up, and follow them. So basically, I was the only string player whose open strings were constantly in tune with the band. This is important because of the way the parts are distributed: I'm always doubled by someone on the other side of a 20-person 3/4 circle. Part way through the rehearsal, I found out that the 'good' tenor player had decided he had other things he needed to do during Collegium time, and had dropped the course. I offered to take over his parts, and acquired another set of strings to tune. (Some of them appear to be over 27 years old, the same strings that were on the viols when I played with the collegium in the early 80's!) The HIP way to deal with moisture changes is to leave the instrument under the rug on the bed, so through the day it is kept in a fairly constant humidity by the moisture left by the sleepers... Makes one wonder what they did with the lute while they were in the bed! And I think an argument can be made for England's climate, even today, being a bit more stable than New England in the Fall. Anyway, I'm sure none of us uses that HIP method of maintaining stability in their instruments, so why not use a good tuner as well? A final thought, this discussion seems to be taking the attitude that _having a good tuner_ is exactly equal to being in tune, as if there is some unnatural function taking place. If you have a good pitch source, tuning a string is a matter of making beats go away. If you have a bad one, well, it's a matter of frustration. Likewise, the best tuner doesn't make non-concentric pegs turn more easily, cause sticking or sliding surfaces in the pegbox to behave better, improve the quality of the string material, finesse the nut, nor guarantee that my ham-fisted attempts to position the frets and turn the pegs properly are going to result in a stopped LED display. Quite the contrary, the same kind of "good enough for jazz" decision has to be made as when tuning by ear...except you can get away with doing it in a crowded room! ray On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 7:18 PM, Doctor Oakroot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> You spontaneously/intuitively know how to position frets for 1/6 comma >> meantone? >> >> > How did period lutenists do it? By ear - or some combination of ear and > linear measurement. Any error in intonation doing it by ear would be HIP. > > And, yes, I can place frets in the scale systems I use (Pythagorean and > Just, primarily) by measurement and ear. > > -- > http://DoctorOakroot.com - Rough-edged songs on quirky homemade guitars. > ~ Shroud for the Dead ~ available at http://cdbaby.com/cd/droakroot7 > > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
