minstrel: Lute Tuning

[Eloise Mason (nee Beltz-Decker)]

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Jay Freeman wrote:

> I am not at all knowledgeable about such matters, and I encourage
> anyone who knows better to correct me, but I have the impression
> that in one common family of lute tunings, courses 1 through 6
> (the six highest-pitch courses) were tuned so that the musical
> intervals between them, starting at course 6 and working toward
> course 1, were:  fourth, fourth, third, fourth, fourth.  Your
> courses 1 through 6 match that pattern (and note that a guitar
> in regular tuning can be altered to that pattern merely by
> dropping the G string a halftone, to F-sharp).  In the

	I took an alternate-guitar-tunings class where the teacher taught
us that one as 'The Alternate Tuning from the Universe Next Door' --
because until Segovia became a supahSTAH with what was then called Spanish
Tuning (and is now what pretty much everyone uses on guitar), that was the
standard way to tune a guitar. And it does interesting things to the
open-chord charts. It makes B a playable key for beginning guitarists, for
example (at the price of F).

	I could scan the chordsheet I got in class and make it available
offlist to folks, if there's interest. It's not period, it's Valid Ways to
Make These Chords in that tuning on a fretboard instrument.

-- 
Eloise Mason (nee Beltz-Decker)     eloise at ripco.com
	Kids are compassion and cruelty and curiousity, wrapped up
	in solipsism and leaking random fluids.  -- Ursula Vernon