Eventually by experimentation you will find the best pitch for a given lute. If your lute is a copy of an original, my informal survey, by no means scientific, just 40 years of stringing lutes at various pitches, gives 408 as a good starting point. If you haven't tried 408, it is a fun pitch to try in any case. If your lute is scaled down, xerox wise, from its original size, you probably should use a higher pitch, but I have had good experience with 408. Since the pitches 440 and 415.3 are "exact" pitches, we can safely rule them out for lute as an historical consideration, since there is no way that the majority of lutes would all have been tuned to those pitches like we do now. Fortunately, you can use whatever pitch you like.
For a French baroque lute 370 is also very nice, although for whatever reason I have also had good luck with 392 on the "French Frey" I currently do not have any lutes at 440--I ordered a small one, a "Xerox" Frey at 60cm, just to have one instrument at 440 for lessons, etc, then tuned it down after a month or two at 440. Allez calculer! Xerox Frey at 60cm loads of fun to play, however. dt At 12:06 PM 4/1/2009, you wrote: >String tension is definitely a factor. If I tune my 8-course down to 415, it >sounds a little flabby, especially the lower three bass courses. I'd have to >restring at least those courses to get an acceptable sound at 415. > >Guy > >-----Original Message----- >From: Bruno Correia [mailto:[email protected]] >Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 11:18 AM >To: lute-cs.dartmouth.edu >Subject: [LUTE] Instruments at 415 > > A question to the experts: Are instruments, in general, built to work > at a certain frequency? Recently I started to tune my five course > guitar in 415, but I think the sound is a bit muffled... > > > > Should I use thicker gauges? > > > > > > -- > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
