You really have the feel for this style. Very nice. And of course, the gut sounds better. A lot better. My Baroque lute and vihuela are in gut, and switching to the archlute (carbon, nylon, and copper wound basses- Satan's Strings!) the feel is positively slimy. The damn thing still sounds good, but it takes getting used to. I actually have more problems with the left hand fingers sliding around on the fingerboard like a drunken ice skater than I do with the right hand touch.
No advice, other than to become sensitive to the change from one to the other. For right hand, lots of careful warm-ups, slow, sensitive quality repetitions with EXTREMELY relaxed finger tips. And yet, a measure of strength behind the stroke. Don't let the hand or wrist become locked, but still feel the action come from smooth, elastic finger strokes. Hard to describe some of this stuff. Dan >Dear lutenists, > >the difference of touch between those two approachs of stringing seems to >be a tricky business! I had (still have!;-) problems after years of >synthetics in starting with gut strings, but after getting some preliminary >touch to gut strings, playing the synthetics with acceptable sound feels >even more difficult than the move from synthetics to gut! > >Any advice? Any advice other than "stay in gut/synthetics"? > >Arto -- = To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
