On 25 July 2011 21:00, David Smith <[1][email protected]> wrote:
I finished building my cittern this morning. Now that I've played
it
(briefly before I had to leave for work), I think metal strings
plus
wooden tuning pegs plus a scalloped fingerboard is a really bad
idea.
The tiniest tuning movement changes the pitch several steps. Any
but
the lightest pressure behind a fret bends the pitch up a semitone.
I
wonder why our renaissance forebears went that way.
OTOH, I love the sound.
(Pictures of the build process:
[1][2]http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.232803666741860.60013
.21099
1832256377&type=1 )
Have you taken the pictures down? I can't access them
I've just been playing a bandora on loan for a couple of months. Like
your cittern the bandora has metal strings, wooden tuning pegs and
scalloped fingerboard (AND non ET) Tuning was a problem for me too -
but I suppose you will get used to it. So: citterns of all kinds,
orpharions, bandoras and maybe some other plucked instruments had wire
strings and wooden pegs (probably non ET but don't know if they all had
scalloped fingerboards). Players must have coped somehow.
When citterns became fashionable again in the 18th century (English
guitars, cistre ou guitharre allemandes etc), various alternatives to
pegs emerged, watchkey, tuning mechanisms. But pegs were still used
too.
Stuart
References
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0991832256377&type=1
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References
1. mailto:[email protected]
2. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.232803666741860.60013.21099
3.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.232803666741860.60013.210991832256377&type=1
4. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
