Dear Morgan > I am looking for advice on a first student lute, in this case a > renaissance lute. If this email is inappropriate for this list, or
Best place to ask, as you'll find many contradictory aswers. Welcome to the club. > Of the 6, 7, and 8 course lutes, it would seem that a 7 course lute > would be most practical. How right you are, and for all the right reasons, too. Only go for a 6-course is all you want to play is early to mid 16th century music. Only go for 10 courses if you want to play Ballrad c.s. and a lot of baroque continuo. > this reasonable? Are 6 and 7 course lutes tuned differently (unison vs > octave course)? That's up to you. Earlier lutes tend to have more octaves (till 4th course), but that's largely a matter of string choice. With modern overspun strings you shouldn't use octave strings, the metal is bright enough as it is, but with gut basses it's nice to add octave strings to add harmonics to the dull basses. You can experiment. > Renaissance lutes > seem to vary in scale length from 540mm to 670mm. Again largely influenced by string choice. Moderns strings can handle more variety in string length for the same pitch, wit gut it is a bit more precise. Around 59/60m for a g'-lute tuned at a'=440. Around 63 for a g'-lute tuned to a' = 415. Smaller lutes will be higher (e.g. a' lutes at around 54/56cm), bigger ones will be lower. > small hands? With guitars, often the intonation suffers with shorter > scale lengths, is this true of lutes as well? Movable frets solve part if this problem, but my 56cm 6-course doesn't seem to suffer from it. I find my big lutes and small lutes each have points that make them easier to play than the small or big ones. It depends a bit on the repertoire. Small ones are easy because small, but you have to be very precise with the chords. Big ones cause big streches, but you don't have to be so precise. The big ones can be a bother to hold, though: heavy on the shoulder/arm. But hand streches are only a problem in really difficult music. Some Dowland pieces would be included. > hold. Is there a body size that would be most comfortable to hold? You should try. But it's hard to tell before actually having played a lute for a few weeks/months. In the beginning all can be quite uncomfortable. > Does the body depth differ, and if so, is a shallower lute more > comfortable to hold? Yes, to me they are. > All of the student lutes I have looked at have either 9 or 11 ribs. > What effect does the number of ribs have, if any? More ribs is higher price. But multi-rib lutes look good! ;-) Multi-ribs lutes can be shallower = give more projection. > lute is a big investment for me and I hope to make as good a choice as Get the best lute possible. A student lute from an 'expensive' maker is better than a lute with fancy ornaments from a cheaper maker. Find the best maker, then his cheapest lute. good luck David -- ******************************* David van Ooijen [email protected] www.davidvanooijen.nl ******************************* To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
