Dear lute-listers, A question from a beginner:
First to introduce myself, my name is Joshua and I've been playing the lute for several months now; I have been on the list for a couple weeks and am really enjoying following your discussions. I have a rental 7-course and I am now in the process of taking the plunge and buying a lute of my own. After much reading, pondering and agonizing over the best number of courses to start with, I've come to the conclusion that a 7-course best suits my needs. So onto to my question: I know that some people re-tune the 7th course from D to F as needed, but on my rental lute this seems quite impossible. The diapason is stung to F and if I drop it down to D it becomes far too wobbly and flabby. From this I assume that if I were to restring it to D, which I'd prefer on the whole, it would likewise be impossible to raise it to F. Currently the lute is strung with Pyramid strings so the basses are metal wound. Is it only possible to change from D to F on the same string if one uses gut strings (Poulton remarks to this effect in her tutor that if it's strung to be tuned at D "it will only be possible to raise it to F if gut strings are used")? Otherwise I have to re-string? Or does someone use some other stringing solution, besides just keeping it D and fingering the third fret for F (or buying an 8-course lute...)? I've read enough about stringing lutes to understand that it will be a while before I understand anything about stringing lutes... Thank you for taking the time to help out a newcomer. Best wishes, Joshua To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
