Newish bands with mandolin or lute?

[allenhopkins]

Apologies for the off topic on this thread, but wondered, is the lute more difficult to play than the mandolin? I know they are closely related, but I've heard that a lute is extremely difficult to play.

Pasha, sorry no one responded for more than a month.

The lute is different; wouldn't know its difficulty, since I've never tried one. Lutes have been around 500 years or more, predating the mandolin, which took its early "bowl-back" shape from them. Related to the Middle Eastern oud, they have a fixed bridge to which the strings are tied, a short neck that bends back at an angle before the "peg box" or headstock with tuners, and, in many cases, unfixed frets that are tied on to the neck and can be re-set to accommodate different scales or tunings. Originally strung with gut, they now generally use plain nylon for the treble courses, metal-wrapped nylon or gut for the lower.

There are many types of lute -- Renaissance lutes, baroque lutes, lutes that attempt to recreate the oldest, medieval instruments. They have generally many more string courses than the mandolin; eight courses are common, and ten- and twelve-course lutes are played. They have fewer frets than guitars or mandolins, probably twelve at most.

The Wikipedia article on lutes is helpfully descriptive. As to difficulty in playing, lutes were originally played with a feather quill as a pick, but lutenists' technique switched to finger-style centuries ago. Paul O'Dette, of the Eastman School of Music faculty here in Rochester, is a world-class lutenist; here's a vid of him playing Fantasia Cromatica by the 17th-century English composer of lute music, John Dowland. You can judge how the picking and fingering techniques compare to the mandolin.

[Chris Gray]

Had to revive this old thread because I came across this on Reveb https://reverb.com/item/69117209-col...ade-in-the-usa

[Old Dog Dave]

A couple of "newer" bluegrass/bluegrass-influenced bands to take a look at are Town Mountain from North Carolina and Chickenwire Empire from Wisconsin (I think that's where they're from). As for a more strait acoustic (i.e., not really bluegrass) sound, I recommend South for Winter. Saw them here in Olympia and absolutely love their sound. If you want a much more traditional old-timey sound, check out the young banjoist, Nora Brown. I know--it's banjo! Aargh! But, any under-20 acoustic player who can cite Roscoe Holcomb, Clarence Ashley, and Buell Kazee as influences is aces in my book.

[Mando Esq]

Had to revive this old thread because I came across this on Reveb https://reverb.com/item/69117209-col...ade-in-the-usa

I saw the Lumineers last summer. Jeremiah Fraites was indeed playing a brown Collings oval hole A, perhaps it was this very mandolin. Very cool.

My recollection from seeing them live in past years is that he played Eastman A models (either 305 or 505).

[DavidKOS]

The lute is different; wouldn't know its difficulty, since I've never tried one. Lutes have been around 500 years or more, predating the mandolin, which took its early "bowl-back" shape from them. Related to the Middle Eastern oud, they have a fixed bridge to which the strings are tied, a short neck that bends back at an angle before the "peg box" or headstock with tuners, and, in many cases, unfixed frets that are tied on to the neck and can be re-set to accommodate different scales or tunings. Originally strung with gut, they now generally use plain nylon for the treble courses, metal-wrapped nylon or gut for the lower.

There are many types of lute -- Renaissance lutes, baroque lutes, lutes that attempt to recreate the oldest, medieval instruments. They have generally many more string courses than the mandolin; eight courses are common, and ten- and twelve-course lutes are played. They have fewer frets than guitars or mandolins, probably twelve at most.

To add a few comments:

I play mandolin much more often than the lute.

But, I have a good bit of experience on the oud (that's another story...fretless, played with a long pick called risha or mizrab, mostly I used it for Arabic or Turkish music) and have also played Renaissance lute off-and-on for some time now, having built one from a kit in the mid-1980's.

As mentioned, the lute is a bit different from the mandolin - gut, now often nylon strings, tied on frets, played with the fingers not a plectrum, comes in a variety of sizes, varying numbers of paired strings, except the highest string which is single, etc.

Apologies for the off topic on this thread, but wondered, is the lute more difficult to play than the mandolin? I know they are closely related, but I've heard that a lute is extremely difficult to play.

Difficulty level is similar to that of classical guitar, from fairly easy pieces to quite serious compositions needing much work.

Keeping the lute is tune was a challenge, especially with gut strings.

Most of the surviving literature is in one of several versions of TAB, too.

https://www.lutesociety.org/pages/home-page

https://www.lutesociety.org/pages/lute-tuning

Renaissance 8 course lutes are tuned to a pattern like: ( D F ) G C F A D G for the basic 8 string version, adding lower courses for larger instruments. The 6 string course is : G C F A D G

This is similar to guitar tunings, but the 3rd is one course lower. Tune your guitar 3rd string to F#, which is often done for pieces transcribed from the lute repertoire, and capo your guitar at the 3rd, and you get the G C F A D G tuning.

The Baroque lute has a different tuning, based on a Dm chord : 10 course (D E F G ) A D F A D F

The right hand technique is more similar to that of the classical guitar, but even then there are significant differences, as much lute playing is based on the use of the thumb and 1st finger alternating rather than 1st and 2nd finger and 3rd ; of course the other right hand fingers are used too.

As far as I know the lute has not been used much in American rootsy music!