Hi Mark, Everyone has given solid advice. However, the things suggested are for the long term project of learning historically-informed continuo practice. That's great, but it's frankly not very helpful starting in a pinch. The olden ones thought about harmony very differently than we do and they explain it from that perspective. We're completely comfortable with the idea of just immediately grabbing an isolated C major chord or f minor or Eb7#9b13 or what have you. Back in the day, however, chords were conceived as contrapuntal concurrences of melodic strands in context above a bass which was itself one of those strands. It takes some reverse engineering of modern concepts to understand the semantics of the sources. But there's no need to dive into that head work at the beginning.
It sounds like you just need practical advice on how to come up with an accompaniment that sounds musical. I suggest writing in the chords just as if it's a jazz/pop lead sheet. For example, for an F note with a 6, you would write dm/F; for E 6/4, you write am/E, etc. Don't even worry about voice leading right now. There will be no difference doing this for 13-course as long as you know the chords in that tuning. (And kudos if you do!) This is just to get started. By all means, refine as you go and investigate the resources others have mentioned. Chris [1]Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Tuesday, February 4, 2020, 9:36 PM, Mark Probert <[email protected]> wrote: Hi, all. A bit of an open-ended question here. Suppose I given a piece of early Baroque music, take Monteverdi's duet "Ardo e scoprir"[1] by way of specific example, and I want to create a passable continuo line to support the singers (potentially with me singing one of lines). I come armed with my lute, an a-historic Dm 13c lute, a certain amount of theory, but no real clue apart from "play the indicated root" and "arpeggiate the triads". Given this is akin to asking "how do you realize a bass," can anyone point me in the direction of how you start such a journey on a lute? And if the theory is much different using a Dm lute rather than theorbo? Many thanks .. mark. [1] [2]https://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Ardo_e_scoprir,_ahi_lasso,_io_n on_ardisco_(Claudio_Monteverdi) To get on or off this list see list information at [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. https://overview.mail.yahoo.com/?.src=iOS 2. https://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Ardo_e_scoprir,_ahi_lasso,_io_non_ardisco_ 3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
