Have you tried a significantly lower tension as suggested earlier? What is the tension you're currently using?
Again, I'm also not quite sure what a recording can tell us of 'live' volume etc. M --- On Sat, 29/5/10, Stuart Walsh <[email protected]> wrote: From: Stuart Walsh <[email protected]> Subject: [LUTE] Re: baroque mandolins - string tensions, single/double courses experiment To: Cc: "Lute List" <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, 29 May, 2010, 21:57 Alex Timmerman's playing of the mandolino, fingerstyle, is very convincing. But I still don't know how he is doing it. He's a professional and I'm an amateur may be salient, of course. Anyway, I dug out a home-made instrument with a string length of 37cms, a bit longer than a typical mandolino. And I ordered some nylon lute strings from Tom Neitzert (even Pyramid nylons are quite expensive these days) who calculated a tuning with e rather than g at the top. The idea was to get two strings from just one length of a lute string. This didn't work out so I just tried single courses for a while - and then double courses. I remember trying this experiment years ago. Why does the instrument sound and feel so different with single as opposed to double courses? With double courses, each course really does feel like an iron bar. With single strings it's the complete opposite. Obviously you'd expect some difference but it feels amazingly different to me. Single strings (as, except for the lowest, on the French mandore) seem just right for fingerstyle. Potentially, at least, the notes can sparkle; it's possible to really get a decent tone.With double strings - it's just so different. Here's a little example of single-stringing. It's an Alemande and Corrente by Filippo Sauli. Of course, the Sauli pieces are definitely for mandolino and mandolinos have double courses.... [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oReJcAQIU04 Stuart To get on or off this list see list information at [2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oReJcAQIU04 2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
