Le 10 nov. 08 à 12:18, David van Ooijen a écrit :
On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Andrew Gibbs
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
A nice quote from August Magnan (the entomologist who calculated that
bumble bees are incapable of flight):
'One shouldn't be surprised that the results of the calculations
don't square with reality.'
The other day the cartoon in my news paper showed two scientists. One
congratulates the other with his succesful experiment:
'Congratulations! Bbut is it possible according to the theory?' This
also reminded me of our mean tone discussions.
On a side note, thick gut strings and thin gut strings are impossible
to get in tune with straight frets anyway, whatever temperament.
Perhaps some tolerance in our ears is needed, too. ;-)
Your side note is very true, David, and it gets worse the more the
diapasons (as Rob testified on his 11c Maler lute), unless one adopts
the Dutch lute. I feel sure that is why this lute type is receiving
renewed interest among gut users : Satoh, Beier, and possibly Bailes.
The very long basses, mean that the thickness is not much increased
from 6c onwards, they just get longer..
It is also why the loaded strings on a Baroque lute sound so good.
Again, the thickness of the Venice core is not much greater than that
of the 6c. This, in my experience, largely removes the problem you
are describing, and it is the overall intuneness that benefits, as
much as any intrinsic quality of the string.
I am sure there are ways around the issue, even with thick gut
diapasons, perhaps by compromising slightly on the relative tuning of
the bass and its octave, or somehow fretting on one side of the
diapason.
Nevertheless, one way round the problem described by Martyn, could be
using sloping frets, as Charles Besnainou does. I have no idea how he
gets them to stay in place, however. They do have a very noticeable
slope.
Another mystery concerns the fact that my 11c Dm Baroque lute in 6th
comma, sounded much more acceptable than Benjamin Narvey's did with
the same fret positioning. Neither of us could see any reason why
that should be, The theory would surely predict the same result
whatever the lute size or string types.
Regards
Anthony
David
--
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David van Ooijen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.davidvanooijen.nl
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