Tobiah-
"I've long lamented the apparent resistance of using modern tuning
machines on a lute for example. Had they been available at the time,
I'm rather certain that the old masters would have joyously adopted them."
Respectfully, I don't think so. Anyway, on this point you are a day late
and a dollar short. Check out these planetary gear pegs on Dan Larson's
website:
http://gamutmusic.squarespace.com/news/mechanical-pegs-now-available-at-gamut-music.html
- As to the ordinary machine heads used on modern guitars- try this
experiment. Pull all the pegs out of an 11 course lute. Now get enough
sets & individual machine gears to equal the 20 strings and hang all
this hardware on your pegbox. Now try to hold your lute.
Case closed; unless you are used to holding & playing the largest
continuo theorbi horizontally for hours at a stretch or regularly curl
50 lb. dumbbells with your left hand.
Then the aesthetics of machine gears on a lute? Sorry, NO COMMENT!
-While I appreciate your comment comparing slavish copying of
traditional techniques to the civil war re-enactor, it is most certainly
not a call that the beginner has any standing to make. The old
techniques are not a "fringe exercise" - modern ones are; and are fine
when they work, but It would take a face-to-face hands on session to
show you how I have pushed the old techniques a bit in my own playing.
Going through the learning process of becoming fluent, comfortable, and
just plain musically competent on old instruments without first
undergoing a THOROUGH grounding in the original techniques is asking for
a lifetime of trouble- not only bad playing but serious injury. I know
this from personal experience; 18 months of right forearm tendonitis
(tendinosis now the more correct term for long term, post-inflammatory
condition) using Segovia style technique on the wrong instruments. Kind
of like advanced weapons training or wooden dummy practice in Wing Chun
Kung Fu without having first mastered the three basic forms; which can
take several years.
So to BEGIN this learning task properly, clip your nails, put that pinky
DOWN- go slowly, relaxed, but strong & clean in your first playing of a
lute. It is not a classical, Flamenco, or any kind of guitar. You can
modify things much later when you are used to the instrument; if need &
curiosity impel you. Different instruments, different techniques/feel-
face that basic fact or fail.
Dan
On 8/4/2014 8:37 AM, Tobiah wrote:
If we aim to recapture the sound the
Old Ones made then it is surely right to adopt the same technique
they
used.
As a fringe exercise, rather like a reenactment of the civil war, I can
see having some interest in duplicating as close as possible, what was
done with the music and instruments during the time that they were
created.
I sometimes get a sense however that there is some taboo in searching
out new adaptations of lute music or lutes themselves. I've long
lamented the apparent resistance of using modern tuning machines
on a lute for example. Had they been available at the time, I'm
rather certain
that the old masters would have joyously adopted them. I guess it's
like asking what Bach would have done if he had a pedal. I'm
more interested in what I will do now that I have one.
As for the technique, and what oil paintings depict, and what
people wrote about at the time, I'd have to wonder what might
have developed had the internet been available and instantaneous
sharing of modified techniques and their results was possible.
There must have been a rather dogmatic "do as I say"
passing of knowledge from teacher to student in the likely small
world of the masters. Of this I know little however as I'm sure
the scholars here will soon point out.
I understand the interest in duplicating old practices, but see
a disproportionately small push to further evolve and modify aspects of
performance and instruments taking advantage of the modern
availability of
technologies and knowledge that we now have.
Perhaps I will now be flooded by videos of people who do just
that. I'll welcome it. I'm just a fringe lurker on the world
of the lute player, so be gentle in correcting my assertions please.
Tobiah
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