Re: Ed Martin injured

2005-05-17 Thread Jon Murphy
If I recall it's also the highest latitude in the Lower 48. Craig The town of Angle Inlet, Minn. has that title. It is on a peninsula in Lake of the Woods that is north of the Canadian border and can only be reached by land by going through Canada. Being a bit of a geography buff I'll give

Re: Gone 'the whole hog'!

2005-05-17 Thread Jon Murphy
Bill, Given that some old lutes were made of materials like ivory I can see no reason that a graphite resin couldn't make a lute bowl that would sound quite well - but somehow the aesthetics don't appeal to me. Yet given the abilities of the space age types to concoct almost any internal

Re: Nonskid lute pad

2005-05-15 Thread Jon Murphy
Not knowing that there were specific cloths for lutenists, and as a beginner, I noticed lutenists using the friction of a cloth. I went to an auto parts supplier and bought a chamois leather for about ten bucks. There is both synthetic and real chammy cloths, they are used to dry a car after

Re: lute string?

2005-05-15 Thread Jon Murphy
Marion, I do like the color coding aspect of the graphite, it appeals to my love of multiple function g. As to the methods I'd add a bit to number 3. I've made relatively wide and shallow channels at the peg end of my nut ( that avoids a sharp edge as the string goes to the peg - important on my

Re: interesting lute trivia

2005-05-15 Thread Jon Murphy
Etymology of FLUTE: First recorded in Provençal, as FLAUT, And in English the flute player is yet called a flautist. Engl. flute Provenc. fleute Lat. flatus flare (blow, breathe). And I do hope there is no reflection on the sound of the flute - flatus being the medical term for an

Re: thanks!

2005-05-15 Thread Jon Murphy
A small addendum to Sean's comment on round grooves. A hobby shop or a hardware store should have sets of the small Swedish pattern files. One of those is a tapered round (or rat tail), and the end of that is quite small and good for rounding grooves. You don't need an expensive set as the nut

Re: Posts which are off-topic.

2005-05-07 Thread Jon Murphy
I agree with you all, and I take a positive stand on both sides of the issue. I'm quite comfortable singing (and playing) the bawdy ballads of the lusty Scots of the age parallel to the European Renaissance, but I don't think I'd be likely to sing a lewd song. Is there a fine line, of course there

Re: medieval lutes? and Maalouf

2005-05-07 Thread Jon Murphy
Matt, You have hit the nail on the head. There has been a rewriting of history in recent decades by the pan-Arabists and the Islamists. And there was a rewriting of history many years ago by the Western historians. And there are those who would demonize a culture and a people for the devastation

Politics

2005-05-07 Thread Jon Murphy
I just deleted the last several days of messages after glancing at a few. This is not to say that politics and opinions shouldn't be shared among us. Arto and I have been in an off list conversation in which we disagree, but respect each other's opinions. Once the non lute topic has been opened it

Re: Bass damping, was Re: Antwort avon ...

2005-04-28 Thread Jon Murphy
Without knowledge of the composer (Bruger) I can't decide whether Judenkoenig would apply to Jesus, Herod or the future Messiah. Or just perhaps to a local mythology. Die Erlenkoenig was real to some, myth to others. Words can be loaded with unintentional meaning - and the Nazis were specialists

Re: Lute repair

2005-04-27 Thread Jon Murphy
. On Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:28:14 -0400, Roman Turovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Luthiers avoid working on other luthiers' instruments, as a rule. Really ? :) Marcello Absolutely Marcello, any luthier asked to repair a Venere would tell the customer to take it to Venere, although I think I'd

Re: Stability of tuning.

2005-04-27 Thread Jon Murphy
Herbert, I can't answer your question with regard to lute experience, but I think you would find that once the strings were stable in a range of pitch you could up-tune or down-tune 100 cents and have the string remain stable. Whether the lute tuning would remain stable is another question, what

Re: anti spam on the list

2005-04-14 Thread Jon Murphy
Craig, You aren't over your head here, what you say is correct (I was building computers long before most of you were playing lutes). But this particular bounce message doesn't look good. You are right that we on the list often send duplicate messages by using reply all - one through the lute

Blind players and memory

2005-04-10 Thread Jon Murphy
I can't speak of the old lutenists, but there were many harpers of medieval and renaissance times who were blind. Although it is well past the renaissance era the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792 listed 10 harpers (nine men and one woman). Six of them are listed as blind. The prolific composer for

Re: Strap Buttons

2005-04-09 Thread Jon Murphy
Dana says it well, there are many old pictures of lutenists with straps, but I'd be careful to ensure the bridge end of the body can handle it. This is gratuitous, I admit, but there is another purpose. I've been playing my flat back, which is a thicker body, with a strap for some time - in my one

Re: memorization/Re: Gallot speaks...

2005-04-02 Thread Jon Murphy
Wow, motion and motor - and time and space - and memory. How basic can you get. Both of you spend a lot of words and speculation on the forms of memory and analysis. But the process is not one or another, it is a combination. Do I memorize which finger goes to which fret, or do I memorize the

Re: Woodworking question.

2005-03-31 Thread Jon Murphy
Herbert, As an inveterate jig builder I agree with the other answers. But will add my own. If you are dealing with plain old pine stud you don't need a sharp draw knife (which costs money), a good sharp hunting knife or such will allow you to whittle it to a gross size (the wood isn't hard). Then

Re: memorization/Re: Gallot speaks...

2005-03-31 Thread Jon Murphy
As one who has experienced all sorts of memory over 70 years I'll say that Ed's analysis is technically correct (although I'd disagree with the muscle memory being the most dangerous, it has saved my butt a number of times on the ski slope - but an aerial recovery from an unseen bump isn't the

Re: mesmerization

2005-03-31 Thread Jon Murphy
Howard, I don't know whether to agree or disagree, it is a matter of interpretation. Duke Ellington once said, There are two kinds of music - good music and bad music. Ellington, who died in 1974, is indeed universally credited with that remark, proving that inane comments about music

Re: Questions from a newbie In defence of the EMS lute

2005-03-30 Thread Jon Murphy
OK all, I'm going to make a defense of another lute. I considered the EMS lute kit, which I think at the time would have cost me about $800 (more now with the exchange rates), and asked some advice. The EMS kit was well recommended, but involved a lot of work. I chose to buy the Musikits flat

Re: LUTE-etymology

2005-03-24 Thread Jon Murphy
beginning of a word. In txt-format, Greek characters are not possible, so the spiritus has to be transcribed, and there you are: halieutika, fishing tools. Well said Mathias, Thank you. I confess that my studies of the Greek language were many years ago, so I didn't have the word for that

Re: LUTE-etymology

2005-03-22 Thread Jon Murphy
With many of you I have difficulty finding the familiar Greek LEUTIKA as my Greek dictionary uses Greek characters. Is this lambda-epsilon (eta)-upsilon-tau-iota-kappa-alpha?. And what is the HA, there is no h as a character. Is a form I don't know of the English article the (Gr. o, oi, etc.). My

Re: OT: Mar'jana Sadovska in NYC

2005-03-22 Thread Jon Murphy
Alain, Of course the MIDI doesn't duplicate the exact sound of the strings, but is that Ronde playable on a large lute (a theorbo or whatever). It sounds as if the range would require a harpsichord. Best, Jon - Original Message - From: Alain Veylit [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Roman Turovsky

Re: Botanica

2005-03-22 Thread Jon Murphy
Yes as a matter of fact Weiss wrote a rather unknown suite Dresden # 69 otherwise known as Tip Toe Threw The Tulips in D minor. Michael, is this real or a play on Tiny Tim and his ukelele? And if it is real is the melody similar? Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list

Re: Greensleeves

2005-03-18 Thread Jon Murphy
Mat, I must both agree and disagree. Who cares as to the origins of such a melody, it can stand on its own. well, I was under the impression it was clear that it cannot. Those two Green Sleeves :) I named are trebles to certain grounds. Neither stands on its own. I'm afraid I know only

Re: Greensleeves

2005-03-16 Thread Jon Murphy
Who cares as to the origins of such a melody, it can stand on its own. (And can be smaltzy on its own, it has had that same fate as the melody of Danny Boy/Londonderry Air in that it can be played with intrinsic melodic beauty, or can be played to the groundlings). Who cares is too strong, one

Re: Hoffmann Mandora/Gallichon

2005-03-16 Thread Jon Murphy
Hear, hear Dr. Marion, In my opinion how it could be used is more important than what you call it. Depending on how you tune a six-course instrument, it could function as a guitar, requinto (actually a requinto lute in this case), renaissance lute, a laud, or a mandolino lombardo ottavo. I

Re: Non equal contra equal temperament

2005-03-14 Thread Jon Murphy
Even more. I think ET is a musical embodiment of same egalitarian/republican idea that was perpetrated on the civilization by the secret cabal of Rosicrucians and Illuminati, and MT embodies submission to despotism and status quo. All of this fits nicely into Platonic connection between

Re: Non equal contra equal temperament

2005-03-12 Thread Jon Murphy
Arto, I should stay out of this, but I'll stick my neck out having only seen your message and the quote from RT (those included below). To me there is only one reason for ET, and that is the chromatic instruments with fixed strings (piano, harp, etc.), and the need to play them in different

Re: Plumwood

2005-03-12 Thread Jon Murphy
Eugene, A minor clarification: Prunus is the generic name of cherries and plums, e.g., Prunus serotina (the only North American species of importance as a timber producer) is the wild black cherry, Prunus being the genus and serotina the specific epithet. I believe a number of European

Re: Pegs -bone, CAVEAT

2005-03-12 Thread Jon Murphy
Or walrus-tusk, referred in medieval Russian as fish-tooth, a luxury cabinetmaking material of the era. RT The question was on bone, walrus tusk is an ivory - just as elephant tusk. The scrimshaw artists of the whaling ships used mainly whale bones and many were quite large, but sometimes the

Re: historical pinky off ??

2005-03-11 Thread Jon Murphy
The fellow I got it from Sterling Price claims if you rest your LF there you become possessed. Michael Thames Possessed by what. I don't mind if I'm possessed by the instrument, I'm already that. And I'm possessed by my cat, as is anyone with a cat. But I'm not sure if I'd want to play it

Re: Pegs, revisited - ebony

2005-03-11 Thread Jon Murphy
Somehow in the raucous banter on the thread my original question got lost, except for Tony as quoted below. As Jon said, the modern choice of the harder material for the disposable bit does seem odd. It also seems odd that the efforts made at the time being directed towards lightness in the

Re: Plumwood

2005-03-11 Thread Jon Murphy
A number of replies on this thread, and I thank you gentlemen. I'll try to come back to all in this one message. Yup, it is prunus - I goofed. And I used the plural genera instead of genus. I still don't remember the classifications of taxonomy, but when one comes to wood one needs only genus and

Plumwood

2005-03-10 Thread Jon Murphy
Michael, You mention Plum for pegs, I bit the bullet before starting my from scratch lute and spent the money for David van Edwards CD course. He has a rather good discussion of the various woods, and nicely adds the North American available equivalents as well as he can assess them. He suggested

Re: Pegs, revisited - ebony

2005-03-10 Thread Jon Murphy
Peter, With David I point out that silica (SiO2) is the oxide of the element silicon, and add that the silicon chips of Silicon Valley aren't actually pure silicon (in the late '40s my father, a researcher in solid state physics at Bell Labs, sent out an internal memo speculating on the

Re: Pegs, revisited - ebony

2005-03-10 Thread Jon Murphy
OK, I've read all the messages in the thread and yet have a confusion. A confusion about what is desirable. (Note my earlier comment on the intentionally wearable nylon gear in the speedometer). Why would a luthier want to have the inevitable wear between peg and peg holes be either random or in

Re: Continuo - bass lute

2005-03-10 Thread Jon Murphy
David, We've had honey and tar, and thoughts from afar, We've had staff, tabulation and forms of notation, The RB bass hasn't yet shown its face, And thats well as it has no relation. Hell's bells, the specific continuo for a specific piece, to be performed HIP might require a specific

Re: Pegs, revisited

2005-03-09 Thread Jon Murphy
Dana, Very informative Dana, thank you. BTW, I'm not sure why I said that the pegbox and the peg wouldn't grab if they were the same material. I was thinking of wood, and as that is (more or less, depending on the wood) hygroscopic then both pegbox and peg will swell and and shrink under the same

Re: Taggerts Delight

2005-03-09 Thread Jon Murphy
Goran, What happened to Afternoon Delight? g. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html

Re: Continuo

2005-03-09 Thread Jon Murphy
just the figures and omit the bass. But in any case the bass part has to be played within the group by somebody. Best wishes Thomas Am Sonntag, 6. März 2005 04:55 schrieb Jon Murphy: Alright, I confess again to a lack of knowledge. Can someone define continuo? My musical dictionary defines

Re: Continuo

2005-03-08 Thread Jon Murphy
Alright, I confess again to a lack of knowledge. Can someone define continuo? My musical dictionary defines it as an abbreviation for basso continuo (see figured bass). I don't go by dictionarys, but it would seem that the term means the playing of a polyphonic line to complement the melody,

Re: Pegs, revisited

2005-03-08 Thread Jon Murphy
Tim, By now you know that I'm an inveterate tinkerer, and have made some on the list think I'm a bit off base. But I agree with the comments on friction and Delrin. Guitar tuning machines would be a good solution for the lute, and shouldn't affect the sound. But I don't think I'll use them. I may

Pegs, revisited

2005-03-06 Thread Jon Murphy
Just to pass on a moment of joy. Tonight I turned a short (6cm shaft) test peg from cocobolo. (The blocks I was able to get are 15 long, so there is a 3 wastage that I'm using for practice). I opened a beer, turned on the TV, and sat with my home made shaper grinding away. As I got the rough peg

Re: humidity

2005-03-04 Thread Jon Murphy
Ed, I'll leave the humidity for instruments to others, but will comment on the electronics (as an old hardware designer). Almost everything electronic nowadays is made with integrated circuits in sealed chips mounted on circuit board with connecting lands that are also sealed. The solder points

Re: Off-center pegs

2005-03-03 Thread Jon Murphy
Tim, I concur your solution, you may remember that I said you might be pressing too hard in the shaver. The too much wood is the correlary of the pressing too hard. Come to think of it, I've had the same problem with an electric pencil sharpener - do it too fast and the pencil comes out uneven.

Re: Off-center pegs

2005-03-03 Thread Jon Murphy
interesting, I am griinding away my patrience making one from 3/16 in flat- ground tool steel stock. you even get mounting holes your way, perhaps even slotted holes, I have to file those (yet). Yup, three in/out slots and two left/right slots. difference in lathes, mine is an

Re: Period typesetting

2005-03-03 Thread Jon Murphy
Craig, Although this book doesn't deal with typesetting specifically you might want to look at it. It has a large number of facsimiles of both type set and hand written music from the 15th and 16th centuries. The book is titled Composers at work, The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600. The

Re: Off-center pegs

2005-03-02 Thread Jon Murphy
Dana and Timothy, I haven't gotten my lute to the point of needing pegs, but being one who likes to change gears I've gotten into the peg making while I'm still finishing the mold. Tim, you know I bought David v.E's course on your advice. I've made myself a shaver, partly because they are so

Re: Mutations. Does it matter?

2005-02-26 Thread Jon Murphy
Chris, I think you have the problem nailed, polyphony had a great influence in the development of the scale. I realize that I neglected the hexachord scale in my previous message, as I neglected the tetrachord scale. But my statement of the octave was correct. The doubling or halving of a

Re: Lute game for MS Windows.

2005-02-25 Thread Jon Murphy
Mathias, well, yes, it does. I, for one, when I play renaissance music, enjoy listening to ascending and descending lines that follow the habits of their respective modes. It's fun and it makes that music so much more interesting to me. You have lost me here, perhaps it is my lack of formal

Re: Lute game for MS Windows.

2005-02-24 Thread Jon Murphy
I'm with Chris on this one. Give Herb a break, if he tried to make the first pass all things to all musicians he'd never finish it (no reflection on your programming skills Herb, I quote what we used to call Von Neumann's Law in the early computer business - any system, no matter its percent

Re: universal music data exchange format

2005-02-23 Thread Jon Murphy
Marion, I'll make one last try at what I was saying. I was not speaking of eliminating tabulature or staff notation - or any other way of passing music from one person to another. I'll have to be more boring than usual and mention that I spent a long time in data communication - and still have an

Re: composers style, analysing for

2005-02-20 Thread Jon Murphy
Arto, I'll be on the topic in another letter, this is just to answer your parenthetical question about your use of the phrase red herring. You used it correctly, it implies a distraction. But you might be interested in the origin of the phrase, a phrase now considered to be standard. It was an

Re: composers style, analysing for

2005-02-20 Thread Jon Murphy
Alain, Well said, I think (?). You say that the receivers of Art aren't just the judges (most of them self proclaimed), but despite that it is too often that they are the definers of Art. W.S. Gilbert based his operetta Patience on that. (If this young man can think such thoughts that are far

Re: Double strings

2005-02-18 Thread Jon Murphy
OK, I'll answer (all included to keep it together). Find me the lutenist, or the double strung harpist, who can tune all his strings absolutely to the same frequency I dunno about that, but, there are these people one hires to tune ones piano, they seem able to do a pretty good job, and

Fw: Nylgut

2005-02-17 Thread Jon Murphy
I forward this as it seems to have been sent just to me, but intended for the list. JWM - Original Message - From: Dr. Marion Ceruti [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jon Murphy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 3:04 AM Subject: Re: Nylgut Bruno, I have found that Nygut has

Re: Nylgut

2005-02-16 Thread Jon Murphy
Bruno, I can't speak to the nuances of sound between the several materials - I'll leave that to those who have tried them all. But physically nylgut is closer to gut than to nylon in the selection of the guage. Oliver Wadsworth's StringCalc32 (which I downloaded as freeware, but I don't remember

Re: left hand thumb to stop bass notes

2005-02-14 Thread Jon Murphy
Yup, completely different wrist position. I can't speak to the lute, as I'm too new (but I'm not sure I could find a use for a thumb stop except for an unusual open chord, or sequence. But the painting you direct us to could also be a soft thumb as the player turns to his fingers on the first

Re: Antwort: Re: horizontal spacing in tablature

2005-02-12 Thread Jon Murphy
Alain and Thomas, I promised to read Alain's long message, it is printed but I spent all of today driving to a speciality wood supplier to get what I needed for the proper lute I'm making (to replace the flat back I've learned on). And I've only scanned Thomas' message. There is a history, going

Re: Double strings

2005-02-11 Thread Jon Murphy
Brlute, Vance and demery have almost said it all. Demery speaks of two things, the imperfections of the strings and the lighter string tension. They are two sides of the same question. Early strings didn't have the strength of modern ones (in part due to the imperfections - the weakest link in

Re: Music Stands

2005-02-11 Thread Jon Murphy
- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 7:52 PM Subject: Re: Music Stands Jon Murphy [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: But I'm sure that I've seen in a scholarly account that point made. The ability for the musicians to have their own copy of the music

Re: new pieces for lute - Zamboni

2005-02-09 Thread Jon Murphy
I show my plebian side, as an ex-hockey player from the days before Zamboni I find a Zamboni to be a modern invention that saves the players having to come out and shovel the ice between periods. Wish we had one in my day. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at

Re: horizontal spacing in tablature

2005-02-09 Thread Jon Murphy
Donatella and Alain, I have a small nit to pick, as a former programmer who is an Ivy League graduate - and hopefully not dull. The Ivy League isn't the genesis of programmers who don't know the application (Gates dropped out). Nor is it really the home of techies. It is more likely that the

test message

2005-02-08 Thread Jon Murphy
Had some system problems, just testing. No answer needed. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html

Re: Gut strings

2005-02-05 Thread Jon Murphy
Ed and Ed, I concur. I don't have the time in grade on the lute to speak of string life, but I do have other instruments. My 26 string double strung harp (52 strings in toto) was first tuned up about three years ago with nylon strings. I've had to change some strings one or more times (I keep a

Re: Gut strings

2005-02-05 Thread Jon Murphy
James, It seems ironic for people who think gut has the best sound, to sacrifice that sound on the chanterelle, where it probably has the most noticeable effect... It almost makes more sense (unless you can afford to buy all gut strings) to have nylgut or nylon (which can literally last

Re: Gut strings

2005-02-04 Thread Jon Murphy
Caroline, and Timothy, I wonder at the concern for strings from rank beginners (as I am also). The lute is a subtle instrument, and I'm learning that in my play. But I have a very good ear for tone and pitch and have had to use nylon fishing line for my chanterelle to tune it up to g' without

Re: Antwort: Re: Antwort: RE: Gutsy stories

2005-02-02 Thread Jon Murphy
Thomas, For once I was too brief - I thought I'd mentioned the surviving fixed pitch instruments, but I see I didn't (oops, that was what I meant by comparative working). As to the carry I'd say it was based less on hearing habits than actual auditory phenomena. We know that low frequencies

Re: Antwort: RE: Gutsy stories

2005-02-01 Thread Jon Murphy
Thomas, As David said, high tension = thick string, given a pitch. But I yet question the pitches involved. We are all aware of the rather large differences between the a's in different systems - but somehow we have an actual frequency for them. I'm sure there is good evidence for the actual

Re: Gutsy stories

2005-02-01 Thread Jon Murphy
Dear Martin, Like you I don't knot the strings at the peg, but in 55 years of stringing guitars I've found that back looping the string around the peg puts a bit of friction on it without having a full tension crossover that can cut a string. By back looping I mean bringing the bitter end

Re: Gutsy stories

2005-01-30 Thread Jon Murphy
Rob, Widening a hole is easy, narrowing it is tough. I note that your email domain is rmguitar. If your background is guitar you should realize that the strings pass over a saddle on your guitar, but go directly from the bridge hole on your lute. The pull on the lute string (with the normal knot)

Re: Carbon fiber strings

2005-01-29 Thread Jon Murphy
Craig, Martin, PVF stands for polyvinyl fluoride. I seem to remember that it is actually polyvinyl carbon floride but I'm not certain. I'm a bit confused myself, but let me quote from Mimmo Peruffo's U.S Patent for Nylgut (not named as such in the patent, it is Polybutylene Terephthalat as

Re: Bob Jordan

2005-01-29 Thread Jon Murphy
Alain, I agree with you entirely, although I always have to go back to my music dictionary to look up continuo (abbeviation for basso continuo, a notation of numbers for the intervals above the bass for accompanyment). It may not be of help to your project but may I suggest a book that shows a

Re: Bob Jordan

2005-01-28 Thread Jon Murphy
Alain, Thank you, although I'll have to drop the 10 course back to the 7 course. But I have the harp to try the originals. And I'm sure you are aware that there is no original of O'Carolan - he was blind and didn't write down any of his music. I've seen a number of versions of the same song, as

Re: Re: Re: Carbon fiber strings

2005-01-27 Thread Jon Murphy
I answer Gernot, and write to all. Two posters? Conveniently as the non lute topic was so long I reset my email list to subject so I could read the entire thread in sequence. Wow, there next to each other were exact duplicate messages from Rosinfiorino and Carlos Flores. The last time I connected

Re: Re: Re: Carbon fiber strings

2005-01-27 Thread Jon Murphy
Arto, and all, I think we have been conned, as I mentioned in my message to Gernot. And I am embarrassed that I answered. But I confess to playing a number of instruments and being open to others. What the hell is a LONG VIBRATING TONE. To my mind it is a very large bell in a steeple! Not

Re: Not getting it

2005-01-27 Thread Jon Murphy
Oh Caroline, how can you deny the title. I love it. But in order to bestow it I need more facts. A dowager is an inhertor, so the widow of the Emporor is the Dowager Empress. Although that is unusual, as another line normally takes over and denies the heiress. Now then, dowager duchess would work

Re: sarmaticae antiquae coactae

2005-01-27 Thread Jon Murphy
I suppose some will want to check the sarmaticae with a Geiger counter. RT No, geiger counters only check the random, but very regular, emissions from radioactively decaying material. One would hope that the wonderful rhythms of music won't decay in our lifetimes. Radioactive decay is an aspect

Re: Re: Carbon fiber strings

2005-01-26 Thread Jon Murphy
I can agree with the beauty of the bass, and I'm not sure how R. got the impression that I was suggesting a certain pitch for a certain guage (and I'm not sure what that means). One can go as long as one wants on fretted courses, just make a longer neck and more frets - and if your arm is too

Re: Nylgut

2005-01-18 Thread Jon Murphy
Oh my, Daniel, I love it. A brief lesson in thermoplastics, a description of carbon strings which I knew little of, and of the PBT (nylgut), as well as the contrast to gut. Thanks for the posting. Best, Jon For the general edification, I have posted Mimmo's US patent for the manufacture of

Re: Introduce your lutes to the list!

2005-01-18 Thread Jon Murphy
Taco, I read Alfonso's message differently than you did. And seeing your message I can understand why. Alfonso didn't make it clear as to whether he was asking for list members to evaluate their lutes (as you read it), or to introduce themselves by introducing which of the various instrument

Re: weiss for ukulele

2005-01-17 Thread Jon Murphy
Tony, I would expect that you will get some foolish messages on this (to be played as Weisskiki, or whatever). But there are many instruments in the world - and there have been many fine composers. An arrangement may be an orchestration of a simpler piece, or it may be taking an orchestral score

Re: Nylgut

2005-01-15 Thread Jon Murphy
Bill with nylgut, however, my charango sounds like a lute or ( ... steady ... ) what i imagine a small vihuela would sound like, had one survived. Glad to hear that. I'm anxiously awaiting the nylgut strings I've ordered for my charango that I've tuned as in the Skene Mandora Book. The

Re: lanolin

2005-01-11 Thread Jon Murphy
Tim, Are you sure Nylgut is still nylon? And I don't quarrel here. As I understand it Nylgut is a proprietary product of Aquila (Italy?). And as Nylon is a patented formulation of DuPont the Nylgut must be a different formulation. The question becomes whether Aquila has found a way to integrate

Goodbye cruel world g

2005-01-08 Thread Jon Murphy
Howdy gents, I am often tendentious, but I claim to not be as much so as some. I see that I have 847 messages to read on the Lute List (going back a while). I'm going to erase them all. Many are from RT about new entries to his web site, I like the site and the music - but I already have the home

Re: lute on ebay

2005-01-04 Thread Jon Murphy
Gents, On the same ebay link as the lute in question there are three Celtic harps (the link was in German, but I think I can read it). They may or may not be very fine harps (and they are fully levered, as best I can see). But they are quite fully priced (unless my mental conversion of Euro's to

Re: Vio-print

2004-12-29 Thread Jon Murphy
Matt, thanks - you have just made my point. To coin a phrase: One man's dora' may be another man's lino. My introduction to the mandora came from the Ronn McFarlane Scot's Lute book. Most of his pieces are from the Straloch Lute Book (1627-29) and the Rowallen Lute Book (c. 1620). But there are

Re: Re:Jon

2004-12-29 Thread Jon Murphy
Carlos, I agree entirely - I misspoke. Music is defined within one's self. My intent was merely to describe the transmission process from an external source, and it was triggered by R's tongue in cheek speculation on conical strings. I should have said that the ear defines what we physically

Re: sarmaticae novae

2004-12-28 Thread Jon Murphy
Roman, all is forgiven. I love this piece (I think, I just made a quick shot at playing the first six bars). For the REALLY adventurous: a 7-course intabulation of a folk-song that uses parallel 5ths- Sarmatica 16 at http://polyhymnion.org/torban/torban4.html Enjoy, RT I couldn't resist

Re: Instrument Sounding

2004-12-28 Thread Jon Murphy
Vance, I'm with you, I just mentioned the banjo finger picks as I know of them (tried 'em, hate 'em). But I wonder at what you say of the lute - I thought (from previous messages when I first joined the list) that lute players not only didn't use fingernails but also wanted soft flesh on their

Re: Vio-print

2004-12-28 Thread Jon Murphy
Roman, again we meet in agreement. My bible of historical instruments lists the mandocello, but not a mandoloncello. I think you are right about which is corrupted. The violoncello is a different family, and the forming word is violin (as contrasted to viol - as in viola da gamba, a fretted

Re: Instrument Sounding

2004-12-28 Thread Jon Murphy
- Original Message - From: Charles Browne [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jon Murphy [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Vance Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED]; lute list lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 5:02 AM Subject: RE: Instrument Sounding Dear Jon, I think the word 'loo' is a corruption of 'l'eau

Re: Antwort: Re: medieval songs

2004-12-28 Thread Jon Murphy
Thomas, if you take a look at a facsimile of medieval music you'll see it has something of a translation but usually is also a setting (transformation) into our (modern) musical language. That was sort of what I expected, after reading your question in context. In that case you might want to

Re: Tension and vibrating length

2004-12-24 Thread Jon Murphy
I must not have been clear in what I said. 27N isn't that too thin? and wouldn't it be a little loose? (unless you want your 63 cm lute tuned to G..?) My question on 27 Newtons had to do with my 36cm charango (that I'm using as a mandora/vihuela). I'm afraid I confused the issue by mentioning

Re: Tension and vibrating length

2004-12-24 Thread Jon Murphy
Subject: Re: Tension and vibrating length Jon Murphy wrote: ... I've noted before that my 63.5 lute is happy with about 35 N on the chanterelle (disregarding the pitch, other factors there) - whereas the 36 instrument I'm working with is recommended to be 27N... Hi Jon, I find that very

Tension and vibrating length

2004-12-23 Thread Jon Murphy
I'll try again, as I'm yet trying to string that charandora. I am looking for opinions. I repeat, the O.W. (Aquila) string calculator recommends tensions in Newtons that vary for the same pitch depending on the VL. (This already takes into effect the guage, as that is the resultant. I've noted

Lengths and tension

2004-12-20 Thread Jon Murphy
Advice please, I am trying to string my charango (36cm VL) as a mandola (Ronn's on his CD was 30cm). I'm quite capable of doing it, and in fact have it strung rather well from spare lute and harp strings. And as you all know by now I'm working on combining the empirics and theories of strings to

Re: Beards - conclusion

2004-12-17 Thread Jon Murphy
Count me in the one to three weeks of stubble group, which seems neither here nor there. BTW what number and length of whiskers constitutes a beard? A beard is not a matter of number or length, it is an aesthetic question. Does it have a consistancy, or has it bald spots (with no political

Re: Beards - conclusion

2004-12-17 Thread Jon Murphy
Stewart, a very well done and nice compendium of the various comments. But I reserve the right to make just this night's comments on the thread, as I've been off line a couple of days. Then I accept your choice (and concur with it) to end the thread. Then again I don't have to reserve the right,

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