5. Conclusions:
Be Practical!!
So far, you can probably guess my conclusion:
If you aim to follow the treatises you shall not give a letteral interpretation but a practical one, and admit that equal feeling, equal tension, and scaled tension, had the same meaning: the aim is always playing on an even instrument.
But if we cannot trust pure math, what we can do?
Finding our perfect gauges, perfect for our instrument, our fingers and our preferred brand or kind of strings, it is a matter of just a few empirical tests.
..and, just in case you missed it, here is my post about how to do it:
A simple method to find the string gauges perfectly fitting your instrument Did you ever had the sensation that something was not balanced in your set of strings, but you couldn’t decide wether going thinner o thicker? It happened so many times to me, until I learned this simple trick! You will need no maths or treatises,
Read MoreHere are some more resources. I highly recommend the articles by Daniel Larson because he keeps it very simple
Tags
baroque music, double-bass strings, early music, equal tension, gut strings, gut strings history, gut strings maintenance, gut strings manufacture, viol strings, viola da gamba strings, viola strings, violin strings, violoncello strings
The breaking index rule. The most important rule you cannot escape from (as far as you are voted to gut strings): at a given string length, a string of a given material, will always break at the same pitch, no matter how big it is.Mindblowing or intuitive? Probably both of them.Looking forward to your comments
Read MoreHow a set of strings was composed: keep it simple! With only 4 “gauges” of pure gut and two gauges of silver wire they could cover all the strings from violin to cello!
Read More…and wound strings? …so once we got the idea, we can face the question: and with the wound ones? should we increase or decrease the tension? (originally a facebook live)
Read More