On Jun 12, 2009, at 3:13 PM, Bruno Correia wrote: > So, you say they are different "animals", interesting... but > soundwise, > how would you describe both? More or less ressonant, brighter or > darker > tone, more powerful? Why Piccinini would prefer an archlute and > Michelangelo Galilei would write for a ten course? From your > statement > there is something extra, besides the number of strings...
This gets very complicated, because there are all sorts of archlute- type instruments, some quite large and some smaller liuto attiorbato types. They can have single or double-strung basses. So there isn't a lot you can say that will be true in every case. Archlutes mostly tend to have only six courses on the fingerboard and thus are chromatic only down to G, while a 10-course is chromatic down to low C. On an archlute of any sort, there will be difference in the tone between the fingerboard strings and the extension strings (which have more volume and more boing, as it were), which will be what gives the archlute away in the blind taste test, if you happen to be testing with music for more than six courses. Otherwise, the difference is subtler. There should will be more sympathetic vibration on an archlute because there are more open string pitches. Would you necessarily hear this in a blind test? Who knows? It depends on the two individual instruments. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
