The half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the belly and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The belly is joined directly to the rib, without a lining glued to the sides, although a cap and counter cap are glued to the inside and outside of the bottom end of the bowl to provide rigidity and increased gluing surface.Īfter joining the top to the sides, a half binding is usually installed around the edge of the belly. The lute belly is almost never finished, though in some cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac or glair in order to help keep it clean. Some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to ensure proper sonic results. The belly thickness is somewhat variable, but hovers between 1.5 and 2 millimeters in general. He further suggests that the inward bend of the soundboard (the 'belly scoop') is a deliberate adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenist's right hand a bit more space between the strings and soundboard. Robert Lundberg, in his book 'Historical Lute Construction,' suggests that ancient builders placed bars according to whole-number ratios of the scale length and belly length. The geometry of the lute belly is relatively complex, involving a system of barring in which braces are placed perpendicular to the strings at specific lengths along the overall length of the belly, the ends of which are angled quite precisely to abut the ribs on either side for structural reasons. Matheson, ca 1720, stated if a lute-player has lived eighty years, he has surely spent sixty years tuning. Often pegs were made from suitable fruitwoods such as European pearwood, or equally dimensionally stable analogues. As the wood suffers dimensional changes through age and loss of humidity, it must as closely as possible retain a circular cross-section in order to function properly, as there are no gears or other mechanical aids for tuning the instrument. As with other instruments using friction pegs, the choice of wood used to make pegs is crucial. The tuning pegs are simple pegs of hardwood, somewhat tapered, that are held in place by friction in holes drilled through the pegbox. The pegbox for lutes before the Baroque era was angled back from the neck at almost 90° (see image), presumably to help hold the low-tension strings firmly against the nut, which is not traditionally glued in place, but is held in place by string pressure only. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the lute's fretboard is mounted flush with the top. The neck is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood (usually ebony) to provide durability for the fretboard beneath the strings. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength see the photo among the external links below. The back or the shell is assembled from thin strips of hardwood (maple, cherry, ebony, rosewood, gran, wood and/or other tonewoods) called ribs, joined (with glue) edge to edge to form a deep rounded body for the instrument. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard. In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings called the rose. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood (usually spruce). Recent research by Eckhard Neubauer suggests that ‘ud may in turn be an Arabized version of the Persian name rud, which meant 'string,' 'stringed instrument,' or 'lute.' Gianfranco Lotti suggests that the 'wood' appellation originally carried derogatory connotations, because of proscriptions of all instrumental music in early Islam. The words 'lute' and 'oud' derive from Arabic al‘ud ( العود literally 'the wood'). 12.2 Lute music online and other useful resources.The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist, or lutist, and a maker of lutes (or any string instrument) is referred to as a luthier. It is also an accompanying instrument, especially in vocal works, often realizing a basso continuo or playing a written-out accompaniment. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the early Renaissance to the late Baroque eras. The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud both descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes. (Composite chordophone sounded by the bare fingers) Buy cd's at Amazon Buy sheetmusic at SheetMusicPlus

Ancient greek lute