A Baroque Lute - new project

Due to relatively extreme cold weather conditions over the past month the relative humidity in the heated kitchen area where I am obliged to work on the lute has been very dry in the low 20% RH region. This has caused the repaired joint in the sound board below the bridge to open up again during the dyeing/varnishing operation.

Another repair attempt has been made this time using the glued paper strip method employed on the bowl construction. The glued strips are heated in place with a hot iron after glue has been run along the joint hopefully forcing the hot hide glue to penetrate into the joint. After the glue has cured for 24 hours or so the paper strips have been removed by softening with water and wiping them away with a wet cloth. The sound board in this area will again require finishing with dilute shellac.

Time to calculate stringing for the lute.

The 11 course lute will be tuned in so called D minor tuning i.e. the first six courses when played open sound a chord of D minor A d f a d' f'. String length is 67.5 cm.

The standard pitch for the string calculations is defined by the air resonance frequency of the lute that has been determined on page 1 of this topic as 114 Hz ±10Hz or somewhere between 124 Hz and 104 Hz.This will the frequency of the 5th to 6th course so strings will be calculated for standard pitch A415 and A392 (a semitone and whole tone below A440) - A415, 5th course is 139 Hz and 6th 104 Hz and A392, 5th course is 131 Hz and 6th course 98 Hz.

The lute will be strung in plain nylon or pvf and the basses (octave tuned Cc, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg) Pyramid wound or lead cored braided Dacron with plain nylon or pvf octaves. Tension will be relatively low to start with ranging from 35 Newtons for the first course to 26 Newtons for the basses (a force of 1Kg is equivalent to 9.8 Newtons). For convenience the handy Pyramid slide rule - available from Pyramid or suppliers of their strings - has been used for the calculations. Of course data for the braided strings must be determined separately using a string test rig.

A discussion on lead cored braided Dacron strings made at low cost from troll fishing lines can be found here - now missing the images unfortunately.

http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=10010&p...

Structural assembly of the lute is now complete awaiting fretting and stringing. The nut has been shaped ready for making the string grooves and is currently soaking in purified gasoline (Coleman's camping stove gas) to ensure complete de-greasing. I still have to sort out what I have in the way of strings and gut fret.

I like how the dyeing of the bowl and peg-box has brought out the flame figuring of the sycamore (maple) wood and the natural fluting of the ribs of the bowl.

Total weight unstrung is 935 grams.

All of the strings have now been fitted - a boring task so spread over three days. String selection is not optimum as only strings in stock ready to hand have been used but it will allow assessments/adjustments to be made when the strings are brought up to full tension. The tied on frets will be fitted once the string action at full tension has been determined.

The nut is curved to match the transverse curve of the fingerboard surface. String clearance at the nut is about 1.3 mm for the first course increasing to about 2 mm for the bass courses. The nut, of course, is not glued in place but is well fitted and held in place by string tension. This will allow adjustment for string height by shimming if necessary. By design, the 11th course octave tuned pair of strings is run outside of the fingerboard surface over an extension to the nut and is tied to pegs outside of the peg box side walls - a feature sometimes found on surviving lutes of this type. The 11th course is always played open so is not stopped.

Use of modern wound basses means that their octaves are not strictly necessary to provide brightness as they would be for gut strings. However they do still preserve the characteristic lute timbre and so will avoid the instrument sounding more like a guitar!

With the strings at full tension tuned to D minor tuning A415 standard pitch the air resonance frequency has been measured using an H2 Zoom digital recorder positioned over the sound hole and tapping the sound board next to the bridge with the strings fully damped. The sound file has been analysed using free Audacity software to provide the following spectrum analysis. The most prominent frequency peak at 139 Hz is the air resonance frequency of the lute.



This is a little higher than the calculated frequency of 120 Hz ±10 Hz - based upon the approximate measured volume of the bowl reported earlier in this thread. The measured volume does not include the volume of the braces that would further reduce the measured air volume and so increase the calculated air resonance frequency a bit more, say 121 Hz ±10 Hz or within the range 111 Hz to 131 Hz.

Nevertheless at 139 Hz measured air resonance frequency this happens (by fortunate chance!) to be exactly the pitch of the 5th course in D minor tuning at A415 so nothing to complain about there!

Although the strings still require some time to settle down the lute has some promising resonances with the strings played open. I have a sound clip of this but have not yet figured out how to post it here. I suppose that a hosting site for audio files must be used as for the image files? Any suggestions?

Next to instal the tied on frets

Another downside of nylon frets is that the nylon is slippery and hard to tie firmly without using a special knot so the proposed trial fretting has been abandoned and fretting will proceed using gut frets.

There is sufficient space on the neck to accommodate 10 frets. Mary Burwell refers to 9 frets on her French Baroque lute but Robert Dowland (son of the renowned English lutenist and composer) in his lute tutor 'Varietie of Lute Lessons' published in 1610 notes that (recently) 'by the French nation, the necks of the lutes were lengthened and thereby increased two frets more , so as all those lutes which are most received and desired, are of ten frets'. So ten frets it is.

Dowland provides instructions on how to set the fret spacings, measured from the nut, using dividers and marking the fret positions on 'a thin flat ruler of whitish wood'. He also notes that the frets are graduated - reducing in diameter from the nut end of the fingerboard - the first two frets being the same diameter as the gut 4th course of the lute, the next two the same diameter as the 3rd course, the fifth and sixth frets the same diameter as the second course and the remaining frets the same diameter as the first course.

Dowland's instructions have not been followed for fret spacing - instead frets will be spaced calculated to modern 12 tone equal temperament spacing. As the frets can be adjusted final fret positions will then be fine tuned 'by ear'. Tying frets is hard on the fingers and tedious so only four frets have so far been positioned on the neck - hopefully the remaining six will be fitted later in the week.

Fretting is now complete so the lute is finished and ready for playing - apart from some fine adjustments as necessary. Only about a year behind schedule but better late than never!

Pyramid gut has been used for the tied on frets in the following measured diameters from fret #1 at the nut downwards - 0.92 mm, 0.86 mm, 0.83 mm, 0.78 mm, 0.72 mm, 0.69 mm, 0.65 mm, and 0.64 mm for frets 8, 9 and 10. These are finer graduations than recommended by Dowland because this was the gut available in stock. Also diameters are greater by an estimated factor of about 1.3 than those recommended by Dowland due to use of modern Nylon and wound strings having greater stretch and amplitude of vibration than gut strings.

Each fret is tied tightly to the neck in a position one or two frets higher so that the taper of the neck increases tension on the fret as it is pulled into position. The fret knot is as shown in the attached image pulled as tightly as possible - using two pairs of pliers - the loose ends are then cut to about 2 mm from the knot with nail clippers and the ends melted with a soldering iron up to the knot.

I have not been playing lute for several months now so it will likely take a while to get accustomed to this instrument.

Congrats! Looking and sounding great. Good things come to those who wait...
You can't rush such things and our weather has been impossible to say the least!
You probably have some pieces in mind to work away at, but in case you take requests he hee...this is pretty much
my favourite baroque piece Bourrée from BWV 996(Bach):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyEGKANa990
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ83EBKH598

Really nice work and fun thread to follow.

Now that the project lute is complete it may be of interest to compare - side by side - a Maler lute in its original 6 course 16th C form with its later modified form as a Baroque lute. My copy of the 16th C Maler lute, made in 1979, is based upon a surviving sound board in the GermanischesNationalMuseum with a relatively low bridge position. I later modified the lute to a string length of 67.5 cm with a shortened neck with seven frets. The modification project was posted on this forum here:

http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=11852#pid80...

Note that both lutes have the same string length of 67.5 cm. Note also the natural darkening of the sound board after 40 years exposure to the daylight light spectrum.

In moving from a six course Renaissance lute to 11 course Baroque lute the immediate problem is that the latter with its heavier neck and peg box is relatively 'top heavy' causing the instrument to roll and slide around on the lap. The traditional method used to stabilise Baroque lutes - particularly those with extended secondary peg boxes - is to use a strap to hold the instrument firmly in position when being played. I will need to experiment with the possibilities - including a non historical modern guitar strap - to find an arrangement that works best for me before moving on to modifying my playing technique.

Here is a description of some of the historical alternatives seen in the iconography:

http://www.vanedwards.co.uk/straps.htm

It is now over 9 months since I have played any of my lutes so the Baroque lute has been lying face down on a table in a spare room more or less in the same condition reported in the last post.

I thought that it may be of general interest to check out the lute in an effort to resurrect and further advance this topic as originally planned.

As reported earlier in this thread, the lute has been strung with modern lute strings using strings that I already had in my limited stock - so not the optimum set up. I have been using Pyramid lute strings for over 45 years now so was motivated to replenish my stock of strings by Brian Prunka's string sale that includes a range of Pyramid strings that I am familiar with.

http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=18343

The first step will be to upgrade the stringing using plain PVF strings and Pyramid over spun basses. Checking the tuning I was surprised to find that after 9 months the lute was still stable in D minor tuning at A392 pitch standard requiring no adjustments! Although plain nylon trebles are installed, the pitch of the first course is 311Hz which is equivalent to f' at A 392 Hz - a pitch that a gut treble might be set at to avoid frequent breakage.

There are three strings that are false so will be replaced first. The test for falseness is a visual one found in some of the early lute tutors of the 16th and 17th C where a string is stretched with both hands and plucked with a finger. If the vibrating string appears as two images then the string is true. If it appears as multiple then it is false. This matters more for stopped strings than it does for open basses.
The following images illustrating this phenomenon come from 'A Brief and Plaine introduction to the lute' by Adrian Le Roy published in London 1574

Further checks on the lute after 9 months inactivity

The action at the 8th fret was measured using a tapered boxwood strip marked with calipers at 2 mm, 2.25 mm, 2.5 mm and 3mm. The strip is placed on the fret board in front of the 8th fret, the string lightly plucked sideways and the strip moved in until the string buzzed. By this means the distance between the underside of the first course and the surface of the fingerboard was determined to be 3 mm. Subtracting the gut fret diameter of 0.44 mm gives the action as 2.56 mm. Recommended action for a baroque lute for the first course at the 8th fret is between 2.4 mm and 2.8 mm. So that is good news.

Inspecting the bridge, I am not satisfied with the shape of the top front edge of the bridge that is too sharp and requires further rounding off. This is something that can be done in situ when the time comes for a full string change.



Otherwise the bridge is holding up well under full string tension.

As reported on page 4 of this thread there was a problem with two of the below bridge sound board joints that had opened up and so were subject to repair. Examination of the joints confirm that the repair was successful if not completely invisible.