You will need tastini to play in temperaments. You can also send me the
specs for a non-tastini temperament, and I can measure it. So far, no
takers. That's assuming you want a reasonably full monte of notes.
dt
__________________________________________________________________
From: Leonard Williams <[email protected]>
To: Lute List <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 12:15:19 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Temperament on the lute
Thank you, Richard Kolb, for the article on tempered tuning for
lute
players in the latest LSA Quarterly! I've recently read two books on
the
subject of temperament: Duffin's "How Equal Temperament Ruined
Harmony" and
Isacoff's "Temperament". The former was fun and informative; the
latter
informative but oddly insistent on the notion that fretted instuments
like
the lute were always in ET because they had fretted fingerboards and
there
was nothing else to be done (!). I didn't like the latter, though he
confesses to loving the sound of pure intervals. But (my point)
neither
volume, being keyboard oriented, really gets to the point of how to do
it on
a lute, so thanks again Richard, for explaining how it works with
frets.
Oddly enough, perhaps synchronistically, just days before I
received
the Quarterly I discovered on my own that the "good" and "bad"
intervals on
my 1/6 comma meantone ren lute can be visually spotted. [I'll use
(course
#/fret letter) to designate fingerboard positions] The major third g-b
(2f-1e) is a narrow (more pure) third: a raised fret up to a lowered
fret.
The g flat-b flat (2e-1d) goes from a lowered fret to a raised one: a
wide
and unpleasant third. Similarly, one can spot good/bad minor thirds
and any
other tricky intervals and adjust as needed for key.
I've found that once I have my frets set, I can tune courses 1
and 6
right on; 2 and 3 a tiny bit flat; 4 and 5 a tiny bit sharp (compared
to
ET). I test with some octaves, and, for some reason the following
works for
me as a test for those strings that "cross the third" (3,4,5): I play
the
chord 5f 4e 3d (f major) and it should sound pretty good (in my limited
experience).
Regards,
Leonard Williams
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