Hi Sean,
Your friend was right - if you're going to make a homemade roped string
(3 strands) the second course is what you use to make a 5th course and
the 3rd is what you use to make a 6th course, but I don't think anybody
did this in the 16th century.
My suspicion is that they bought a bundle of strings labelled "3rd
course" or whatever, then selected their 3rd course strings from amongst
them. The bundle would have included strings of various diameters,
around a mean which was determined by the way they were made (how many
guts, how they were twisted etc). This kind of system persisted until
the 20th century for violin strings.
If I'm right, this also means that when Dowland says use a 4th course
string for the first two frets he doesn't necessarily mean two frets of
exactly the same diameter. He could have graded all the frets very
precisely by choosing slightly bigger or smaller strings from each bundle.
M
On 18/05/2015 21:18, Sean Smith wrote:
In buying and using our lute strings we place an awful lot of faith in our
micrometers. I see people changing strings for going up or down a tone or even
a semitone. Yes, I think I can feel the tension change and hear it to some
degree but we're often talking a difference of microns in string difference.
For example, a change of .42 to a .43 is 10 microns which is not repeatable on my
smaller micrometers (even digital) but is on the 6" digital micrometer. For
rougher measurements, say, between 1st, 2nd and 3rd courses, the delta is easily
seen/felt and I think that even I could make a measurement device for that for
further refinement.
In the 16th century, of course, there were no micrometers although I'm sure
there were fairly accurate (and perhaps, secret?) methods of fine measurement.
I'm wondering how they worked out the diameters. Any place I could read up on
this?
Years ago, a friend did some experiments in roped bass strings and found that
5th and 6th courses could be made from combinations of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd
courses. From this we concluded that nearly all sizes of 6c instruments could
be strung with a total of 3 diameters of strings. The 4th course is a little
iffy in that it could be made from a thicker 4th size or possibly a combination
of 2 chanterelles.
I'm just thinking that by keeping the choices fewer they were able to be more
efficient in string technology. On the other hand, I wonder if this tended to
keep the lute technology at a halt: ie, you can play anything you want as long
as it has the 6 courses of those sizes.
No, nothing was published and the theories are not ready for primetime but I
was wondering what other string scientists have come up with. I realize there
are the notes in Capirola but I'm thinking by mid-century there had to have
been a larger industry at work, judging from the number of books being
published and lute inventories.
Sean
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