Hi, I am new here, having been a lurker previously. Now I am ready to start planning to build a lute.
My question - is knowing how to play the lute essential to being successful in building? I have a musical background (7 years of sax and clarinet) and am now studying music theory and recorder. I have purchased the lute book published by GAL and both sets of plans by Van Edwards. I know that understanding the instrument as a player is important and would add insight to my building but is it essential? Any suggestions in the matter would be appreciated. Ehud PS: I assume that I would make more effort to play an instrument I built but also look at the lute as a worthy and beautiful object in and of itself. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
