Ive been looking at the website of Gerard Rebours and, particularly, at this page:
http://g.rebours.free.fr/Gerard_Rebours.html Rebours says: And frankly, do you think that the guitar could have become the instrument "a la mode" in the XVIIth century, the favourite instrument of kings and princes, who were in touch with the very best in everything, if it was indeed just a foolishly limited instrument, a poor relation to the lute? And among other things: Last, but not least, there is the octave course (or courses) problem : very often it brings confusion in the voices because one can clearly hear the two notes, one octave apart, that it produces when only one of the two notes is in fact needed. So I use what could be called the string selection. It is not an invention of mine, but only a few authors (Mouton, Corette, the Mary Burwell lute tutor) mentioned it. Although the two strings of an octave course are only 3mm apart, I only pluck the one that is musically needed : the low, or the high one, and I must miss it on no account! And when there is an ornament on that course, I have to damp the string I just avoided, otherwise its sound comes back during the trill or the mordent. And as it is sometimes necessary to pluck two adjacent courses at the same time, I finally have four different thumb actions : playing one half, one, one and a half, and two courses. Damping notes techniques are also necessary if one wants to get rid! of those unwanted chord inversions that easily happen on the baroque guitar, and never on the lute. So the problem (as it were) of the guitar is solved. Or the uniqueness is lost. Rebours is clear that he is going beyond the evidence in the books, which he says, is aimed at beginners and amateurs. Do any other modern day Baroque guitarists do as Rebours does especially, the idea of individually picking out the bordon to get a true bass, and damping to avoid inversions in chords? Currently I have my guitar tuned up with bordons on the fourth and fifth courses and have been experimenting with some of these techniques. E.g.: when playing F# on the fourth course and D on the second, playing only the low F#, playing the low F# in runs involving the third and fourth courses. And simply playing low basses and mainly saving the octaves (on the fourth and fifth courses) for campanella passages. The music does sound very different. ----------------------------------------- Email provided by http://www.ntlhome.com/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
