It's a shame that this point has to be re-made whenever the moral and aural superiority of gut strings and those who use them are trumpeted (sackbutted?) on this list. Let the research and experimentation continue. But, and I emphasize this for lurkers and shy beginners alike, there is nothing wrong with playing your lute using the string material you can afford, can look after and make sound pleasing to your ear. There are many performers whose concerts and recordings I can only dream to one day emulate who use mostly synthetics. Same for gut. But using gut is not an excuse for poorly sounding and out of tune play, and I've heard both live concerts and recordings on "modern gut" that I would not want to hear again.
Danny (2 instruments all synthetic strings, archlute 1/2 gut, 11 course lute all gut) On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:21 PM, <[1][email protected]> wrote: Dan, --- On Fri, 1/29/10, Daniel Winheld <[2][email protected]> wrote: > we finally agreed that the serious > lute > player just has to have two of every lute- one in > synthetics for gigs > and one in gut to keep himself honest. > Ah, the HIP police! There's nothing "honest" about using modern strings made by modern makers that happen to be made of the same material as the old ones. And, by implication, nothing "dishonest" or "unserious" about a player using synthetics! There is a gigantic litany of observable differences between modern strings and period depictions and descriptions. We can call them both "gut strings", but ours simply are NOT THE SAME STRINGS that were used in olden days. In sum: Are synthetic strings close to the sound of old guts? Dunno. Are modern guts any closer? Dunno. Let's call the whole thing off. Chris To get on or off this list see list information at [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:[email protected] 2. mailto:[email protected] 3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
