Guy, If you have any guitar experience, you already know the chords. From the second string (E) down to the A string, you have the top five strings of the guitar (albeit reentrantly tuned because the "top" E is an octave lower.) The next four strings represent the diatonic scale from the guitar's open, bottom E up to G. It takes a while to get used to having the bottom string 'spread' like that, but I'm proof that it can be done! Then you just need to concern yourself with the simple task of bringing the top A string into the chord, and working the top two strings into arpeggio patterns which make sense (as they fit between the D string and the b string, which is now the highest in pitch.)
So there would be no real reason to consider changing the tuning if, indeed, you have guitar experience and can transfer it in this fashion. Additionally, most of the Theorbo literature that is in Tab and has other instruments playing with it are for an A theorbo, at least of what I've found so far. If you change to G tuning, you will be behind the 8-ball for this literature. If you have no experience with guitar and/or cannot wrap your mind around the warp from guitar to theorbo, and will not be playing anything out of tab, then tuning the theorbo to G is certainly an option. ray On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Guy Smith <[email protected]> wrote: [clip] > > I plan to seek professional assistance soon, but in the interim, a > tuning question. The instrument is currently in A. I could retune it to > G, so I could more easily transfer my experience with the G lute, or I > could leave it in A and relearn a bunch of chords. Any advice on which > option is likely to be preferable? [clop] To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
