greek laouto

[ollaimh]

i have a mainland greek laouto and a cretan laouto. i decided to tune up the mainland one and broke a few strings. so what is the tuning for the two laoutos and does anyone have strings? my mainland one is a 1912 stathoupoulo, a rare instrument that was my white whale. i had almost unbelieveable problems with the repair guy who restored it. took 6 years and a law suit to get it back but i am over comming my aversion and trying to play it.

i also have some frett buzz up the neck. is that the string loop at the bridge is too low? or the fretts need to be bigger? and how do you tie on these fretts? they are a lot different than lute fretts. i'll post a couple of pics.

[zoukboy]

Mainland: C3C4 G2G3 D3D4 A3A3

Cretan: G2G3 D2D3 A2A3 E3E3

Check out some videos on YouTube. I think you will find that there is a nice buzzy quality to these so what you are hearing might be normal. You can adjust the action height somewhat at the bridge by the placing of the loop (whether the loop pulls the string up higher than the bridge hole or allows it to come out straight). There are diagrams online for tying the frets.

Enjoy!

[ollaimh]

Mainland: C3C4 G2G3 D3D4 A3A3

Cretan: G2G3 D2D3 A2A3 E3E3

Check out some videos on YouTube. I think you will find that there is a nice buzzy quality to these so what you are hearing might be normal. You can adjust the action height somewhat at the bridge by the placing of the loop (whether the loop pulls the string up higher than the bridge hole or allows it to come out straight). There are diagrams online for tying the frets.

Enjoy!

thanks, i'll look on line but having the traditional tuning helps. who seels the strings?

i have been tuning the cretan laouto as an opn d , but i thought traditionally they had a reentrant tuning for all l,aoutos. just going with the strings i had on hand.

[ollaimh]

ps one string is buzzing badly around the fifth to seventh frett. the rest have the usual buzz. yeah the usual buzz is very charming.

[zoukboy]

thanks, i'll look on line but having the traditional tuning helps. who seels the strings?

http://xilouris.gr/catalog/index.php?cPath=248_1000

[/QUOTE]i have been tuning the cretan laouto as an opn d , but i thought traditionally they had a reentrant tuning for all l,aoutos. just going with the strings i had on hand.[/QUOTE]

Yes. The tunings I posted are reentrant.

[DavidKOS]

Mainland: C3C4 G2G3 D3D4 A3A3

Cretan: G2G3 D2D3 A2A3 E3E3
......

Yes. The tunings I posted are reentrant.

Thanks for posting these.

I just got back from a music festival where I was teaching bouzouki. One of my friends teaches Greek songs and plays lauto.

He has at least 4 of them and 2 are in the tunings you mention - and 2 are tuned in between.

However no matter the pitch range, the pattern is all 5ths with the low strings re-entrant.