Medieval Lute 2

My reproduction 4-course Medieval Lute, commissioned from luthier Jo Dusepo, arrived in March of last year. It was beautifully made and I was very pleased with it. 

Unfortunately, I’ve had more pressing Folk and Old Time projects which I had to bring up to speed. As those projects have now stabilised, I can finally give the Lute more attention.

The Lute has a very different feel from my other instruments, mainly because of the bowl back and lightness, but all my stringed instruments are held slightly differently and it's just a question of getting used to it. 

The tuners are friction as on a violin, not geared, and these take some getting used to. I broke one string tuning up, and one of the tied frets came off and had to be replaced. 

It produces a very reasonable volume which will be augmented by thickening up the melody. Melody will be absolutely central. I won't be using any post-Medieval triad chords with thirds. There's no point in having something like this and then treating it like a modern guitar. 

So my options will include doubling notes to create a more rhythmical pattern, strummed polyphonic and alternately picked drones. And then there are embellishments like slides and hammer-ons which seem to come naturally on stringed instruments. All these will be played with a Risha rather than fingers.

I've got a selection of melodies I want to play and these have been tabbed out in Musescore, so learning them is pretty straightforward. The rest is just fun and experiment.