Lute Tutorial n. 1 - Lute Vs. Guitar

Описание: Why Lute is so different from Guitar? :)))))))))

Find out, enjoy.....

It happens quite often that most people, even musician, don't know anything about the lute, even they think is a wind instrument, because lute sounds very much like the word "flute", but that's it.
Lute came to us from Arabs many many centuries ago, it was imported in Europe during the middle ages, it flourished in Europe during the centuries spanning from XV up to XVIII, until it disappeared.

Lute was so popular during Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras that almost everyone played lute, just like today we play guitar, or piano. Lute was a very popular and common instrument celebrated in paintings, poems, and even in songs and plays.

People of those times used to do quite a lot of music for official ceremonies, but also for private entertainment, at home, and lute is perfect for making music at home; infact, we have lots of music for lute and voice meant to be performed by one single person staying home singing and playing by himself.
Collection of printed music has survived until today, and now we can read directly from the original scores. We'll learn together how to do it.
We even have certain editions of music where you have on one side the voice and lute part, and on the other, 3 more vocal scores for singers who wanted to join in, and the layout of the vocal score suggests that they were sung and played by 4 persons around a table.

At first sight you might think "Well, it's just a guitar with a different shape". But if you have a closer look, you realize that there are many, many differences between lute and guitar.

Look at all those strings.... they are simply too many of them! This very model we are examinating has got 8 courses; first models of lute were provided of 5 or 6 courses or pairs of strings; course is simply another way to call a group of 2 strings, so this lute has got 8 pairs of strings, or 8 courses, right?
Well, the truth is that the first course is made by a single string, but we lute players call it a course just the same. So, just like first lutes that appeared in Europe were provided with 5 courses, or pairs of strings, then they began, within years, to add bass strings, so we had 6 coursed lutes, 7, 8, 9, up to 10 coursed lutes;
then they also added more strings as baroque era began, so we had lutes with 11 to 13 strings with different tunings, as well as slightly different instruments such liuto attiorbato, archlute, and theorbo. Well, by the way, baroque lute, archlute and theorbo are very, very different from renaissance lute we have here; in another video, we'll see all these instruments.

Generally, we can say that each era, had its own repertoire, and so we'd say that rather than playing the whole repertoire with the same instrument, to be really "in style", if we want to make a really "Historically Informed Performance" we should use a different kind of lute for every historical period.

TUNING You can't play normal guitar chords on guitar, alas, otherway today I would have been a famous jazz or rock lute player :)

You have to get used to the double strings, which is quite common to mandolin players, or 12 strings guitar players, with the difference that here you don't use a plectrum, but your bare fingers to play 2 string at the same time. Remember that when you're playing one course on the lute, you play both strings of the course at the same time.
Another important issue with the lute for guitar players, for me too I used to play guitar, is the right hand technique.

NO NAILS!
you don't use nails like classical guitar players do. You can as well use fingers when playing similar instruments just like theorbo, or baroque guitar, which we'll see later on.

RIGHT HAND TECHNIQUE.
You play renaissance lute with your little finger touching the soundboard.
At least in the early lute repertoire, you play fast runs not as modern guitar players do, with index and medium fingers, but, as you can see on the video, on the lute, you often play fast runs with this other technique, by using just thumb and index fingers in a techique that spanish masters called figueta.

LUTE MUSIC : TABLATURE
As many jazz or rock guitar players do already know, tablature is a pratictical and visual system for players to read or write music other than the traditional way with notation; well, you'll never imagine that all this system was invented by lute players, and so lute players during Renaissance and Baroque used to

Please write me back and let me know if you appreciate my work.

Bye!

more videos coming soon :