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
“I couldn’t play without varnished strings. Yes, I know they are not historically correct, but there is no other way for me, as my hands are so sweaty and I am so busy, that I move from hard air-conditioned to hot and humid environments even trice per day.”Is this familiar to you? I hear this
Read More2. The Experiment …as they admit also in the treatises, pure math does not work! “If the strings have the same thickness and length and one produces a low note, which is a C, when it is stretched with a weight of 1 pound, the other must be stretched with 4 pounds to make it
Read More1. The Problem Let’s get started: the factors involved and their relationship: In our equation we have so many fixed factors, that we end just with a very simple equation: (at a given pitch and string length) gauge=tension*(under squared root and multiplied for a coefficient for gut’s mass). If we change one of them, the other
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