Michael Hymers
I
have, somewhat improbably, been an early-music enthusiast ever since my
late-1970s adolescence in the town of Wabush in western Labrador, when
I first
listened to an album by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of
London, entitled Songs of Love and
War: Music of the Crusades. This enthusiasm eventually
translated into a desire to play the lute. However, the expense of
acquiring such an instrument, together with my lack of musical
training, forced me to content myself with learning to play rudimentary
classical guitar. Although I like the guitar, in the long run it
didn't seem like much of a substitute for the lute. In 2000 I decided I
could probably afford to acquire a lute,
but hesitated still because I was uncertain that I would be
sufficiently committed to playing and because I thought that I should
not deprive a real musician
of the chance to own any lute that I might
purchase.
My solution was to try making a lute, but that presupposed some experience with lutherie--the art of making stringed instruments (which I keep wanting to spell 'luthiery'). So I began with something simpler, a mountain dulcimer, and the aid of an instructional book called Making Wood Folk Instruments by Dennis Waring. I have always found the mountain dulcimer particularly awkward to play, and it occurred to me that it might be easier to handle if it could be held like a guitar or lute, and if its fingerboard were not so narrow. So I modified Waring's plan slightly and produced the monstrous birth pictured below.
I quickly discovered, as any experienced player could probably have told me, that because the mountain dulcimer is a modal instrument (i.e., it does not have frets to produce every semi-tone, including all the sharps and flats, in the western chromatic scale), there is no advantage whatsoever in modelling the instrument to be held like a guitar. Most mountain dulcimer players sit and hold the instrument on their laps, allowing them to play chords that involve the tip of the thumb and the tip of the little finger maximally extended. This is pretty much impossible on my half-dulcimer, unless, of course, it is played on your lap.
Not to be discouraged, I moved on to my next project. This was the construction of a flat-backed "lute" from a kit sold by Musicmaker's in Stillwater, Minnesota. Unlike an authentic lute, the kit made use of a single, flat board for the back (instead of a bowl of nine or more ribs fitted together), fixed wooden frets (instead of movable tied frets made of gut or, these days, nylon monofilament), a bridge saddle to lift the strings over the soundboard (as on a modern guitar), a finger-board that is elevated above the level of the soundboard and extends onto the soundboard, and a pegboard into which the tuning-pegs are inserted vertically (instead of a pegbox into which the pegs are inserted horizontally). The wood used is a laminate (glorified plywood) of cherry and walnut, and the rosettes are pre-carved by Musicmaker's and inserted into the sound-holes (on a real lute, the rosette is carved directly out of the soundboard). The resulting instrument is pictured below.
Notice that the strings on this lute are actually held in place at the bottom by a tailpiece. This was a later addition, designed to solve a problem: after some months of regular playing, the bridge began to pull away from the body. Even the hands of a professional luthier could not solve the problem by re-gluing, and eventually I took the more drastic step of adding the tailpiece. This somewhat dulled the resonance of the instrument, but it did not have a lot of "sustain" to begin with, so the loss was acceptable. This lute is playable, and for an early effort, sounds not too bad--though it does not come close to the quality of an authentic instrument. Together with Ronn McFarlane's book The Scottish Lute, it proved to be enough for me to learn to play on, and my enthusiasm has continued undiminished.
I was sufficiently inspired by this modest success to want to try again, from scratch. However, my confidence in my abilities as a luthier was not so great that I wanted to spend money on good wood. So I built another flatbacked lute, modelled directly on the first one, from some cheap maple and some 1/8" plywood. The tone on this instrument is even duller than on the first, and it weighs about twice what the kit-instrument weighs. It is not as easy to play, and the strings have a nasty habit of breaking at the nut if they are tuned up to proper pitch. (This is likely because the material for the nut is too soft, and the guide-slots for the strings are too deep. They get trapped as the string-tension increases and then pull apart.) It was a worthwhile experiment, however, and has served as a laboratory animal for some further experiments, including the addition of a treble-rider to the peg-board. (It would probably also serve as a useful instrument of self-defence in the spirit of "El Kabong".) The fancy rosettes on this instrument, again, are not my handiwork, but pre-carved insets sold by Musicmaker's.
Here's
another experiment: a fiddle made from
plywood, according to
plans in Waring's Making Wood Folk Instruments.
I can't play it very well, but I've heard it in the hands of a real violinist, and it produces real notes. Unfortunately, the tailpiece on this instrument exploded, and I had to attach a new one (not pictured) directly to the body of the fiddle.
After three years of playing my first flat-backed lute, I decided I was serious enough about the instrument to buy a real one. In June of 2003 I purchased second-hand from the Halifax Folklore Centre an eight-course renaissance lute, pictured here, made in 1985 by Anthony Murphy of Dartmouth.
I was delighted by the richness of the sound produced by this lute--a dramatic advance over my novice efforts--and this made me want to take a crack at producing an authentic instrument. For help I turned to a book by the late master luthier Robert Lundberg, entitled Historical Lute Construction. And after many hours of work, using plans by Lundberg, here is the result ...
... a
7-course lute modelled on an original, dating from 1592, from the
workshop of a Paduan lute-maker. The ribs are made
from flamed maple, as is the neck, which is covered with a stained
poplar veneer. The soundboard is Engelmann spruce. The original
fingerboard was
(unwisely, because it is soft and easily discoloured) basswood (I have
since replaced it with the same stained poplar veneer that covers the
neck),
and the pegbox and bridge are maple. The pegs are just small violin
pegs, not my own work. Actually, the picture does not show the final
result, because, to my great delight, I discovered that after worrying
about getting the hard things right, I had failed to pay attention to
one of the easier things, and I had reamed the holes for the pegs
backwards. This meant that the peg for the treble string interfered
with my left hand when I tried to play. After hesitating about whether
to do anything about this or not, I decided to plug the holes and
re-drill them. This did not work perfectly, doing some slight damage to
the pegbox, which I reinforced at the lower left of the image by a
small piece of maple ...
... but the end result was good enough as a temporary solution. I have since built an entirely new pegbox and removed the old one.
The instrument looks better and is far more easily played.
I kept a photographic record of my first serious effort. To see this instrument under construction, visit these pages:
The Mold
The Ribs and Bowl
The Soundboard and Bridge
The Neck and Pegbox
Finishing
Time and central heating did not do this first real lute any favours. The sound-board split in the middle, and my attempts to keep the wood humid (putting a damp cloth across the strings) resulted in some discolouration of the soundboard. Additionally, one of the cross-braces on the soundboard came loose and began to vibrate audibly if the soundboard was dry. I found, also, that this lute did not have a lot of sustain in the treble range.
Solution?
I built another lute, which I finished in the winter of 2008. While I was at it, I added a wider fingerboard to make it easier to stop individual courses without touching the adjacent ones (I'm a hamfisted player, I guess). Here it is:
This is a vast improvement over the first, structurally, visually, and acoustically. I have repaired the soundboard on the first and converted it to a six-course lute, but I have not been able to improve the treble sustain. I now believe this to be a problem with the bowl, whose joints are reinforced with small strips of wood, instead of paper.
In between these two lutes I took an excursion into the land of the hurdy-gurdy. I followed plans from a Musicmaker's kit and used some hardware that they sell, but the wood is all proper soundwood. However, it's a cranky instrument in more than one way:
A note on the oud.
Related Links
The Lute: A Brief History by Ronn McFarlane
Guild of American Luthiers
Lute Society of America
Early Music Society of Nova Scotia
My solution was to try making a lute, but that presupposed some experience with lutherie--the art of making stringed instruments (which I keep wanting to spell 'luthiery'). So I began with something simpler, a mountain dulcimer, and the aid of an instructional book called Making Wood Folk Instruments by Dennis Waring. I have always found the mountain dulcimer particularly awkward to play, and it occurred to me that it might be easier to handle if it could be held like a guitar or lute, and if its fingerboard were not so narrow. So I modified Waring's plan slightly and produced the monstrous birth pictured below.
I quickly discovered, as any experienced player could probably have told me, that because the mountain dulcimer is a modal instrument (i.e., it does not have frets to produce every semi-tone, including all the sharps and flats, in the western chromatic scale), there is no advantage whatsoever in modelling the instrument to be held like a guitar. Most mountain dulcimer players sit and hold the instrument on their laps, allowing them to play chords that involve the tip of the thumb and the tip of the little finger maximally extended. This is pretty much impossible on my half-dulcimer, unless, of course, it is played on your lap.
Not to be discouraged, I moved on to my next project. This was the construction of a flat-backed "lute" from a kit sold by Musicmaker's in Stillwater, Minnesota. Unlike an authentic lute, the kit made use of a single, flat board for the back (instead of a bowl of nine or more ribs fitted together), fixed wooden frets (instead of movable tied frets made of gut or, these days, nylon monofilament), a bridge saddle to lift the strings over the soundboard (as on a modern guitar), a finger-board that is elevated above the level of the soundboard and extends onto the soundboard, and a pegboard into which the tuning-pegs are inserted vertically (instead of a pegbox into which the pegs are inserted horizontally). The wood used is a laminate (glorified plywood) of cherry and walnut, and the rosettes are pre-carved by Musicmaker's and inserted into the sound-holes (on a real lute, the rosette is carved directly out of the soundboard). The resulting instrument is pictured below.
Notice that the strings on this lute are actually held in place at the bottom by a tailpiece. This was a later addition, designed to solve a problem: after some months of regular playing, the bridge began to pull away from the body. Even the hands of a professional luthier could not solve the problem by re-gluing, and eventually I took the more drastic step of adding the tailpiece. This somewhat dulled the resonance of the instrument, but it did not have a lot of "sustain" to begin with, so the loss was acceptable. This lute is playable, and for an early effort, sounds not too bad--though it does not come close to the quality of an authentic instrument. Together with Ronn McFarlane's book The Scottish Lute, it proved to be enough for me to learn to play on, and my enthusiasm has continued undiminished.
I was sufficiently inspired by this modest success to want to try again, from scratch. However, my confidence in my abilities as a luthier was not so great that I wanted to spend money on good wood. So I built another flatbacked lute, modelled directly on the first one, from some cheap maple and some 1/8" plywood. The tone on this instrument is even duller than on the first, and it weighs about twice what the kit-instrument weighs. It is not as easy to play, and the strings have a nasty habit of breaking at the nut if they are tuned up to proper pitch. (This is likely because the material for the nut is too soft, and the guide-slots for the strings are too deep. They get trapped as the string-tension increases and then pull apart.) It was a worthwhile experiment, however, and has served as a laboratory animal for some further experiments, including the addition of a treble-rider to the peg-board. (It would probably also serve as a useful instrument of self-defence in the spirit of "El Kabong".) The fancy rosettes on this instrument, again, are not my handiwork, but pre-carved insets sold by Musicmaker's.
I can't play it very well, but I've heard it in the hands of a real violinist, and it produces real notes. Unfortunately, the tailpiece on this instrument exploded, and I had to attach a new one (not pictured) directly to the body of the fiddle.
After three years of playing my first flat-backed lute, I decided I was serious enough about the instrument to buy a real one. In June of 2003 I purchased second-hand from the Halifax Folklore Centre an eight-course renaissance lute, pictured here, made in 1985 by Anthony Murphy of Dartmouth.
I was delighted by the richness of the sound produced by this lute--a dramatic advance over my novice efforts--and this made me want to take a crack at producing an authentic instrument. For help I turned to a book by the late master luthier Robert Lundberg, entitled Historical Lute Construction. And after many hours of work, using plans by Lundberg, here is the result ...
... but the end result was good enough as a temporary solution. I have since built an entirely new pegbox and removed the old one.
The instrument looks better and is far more easily played.
I kept a photographic record of my first serious effort. To see this instrument under construction, visit these pages:
The Mold
The Ribs and Bowl
The Soundboard and Bridge
The Neck and Pegbox
Finishing
Time and central heating did not do this first real lute any favours. The sound-board split in the middle, and my attempts to keep the wood humid (putting a damp cloth across the strings) resulted in some discolouration of the soundboard. Additionally, one of the cross-braces on the soundboard came loose and began to vibrate audibly if the soundboard was dry. I found, also, that this lute did not have a lot of sustain in the treble range.
Solution?
I built another lute, which I finished in the winter of 2008. While I was at it, I added a wider fingerboard to make it easier to stop individual courses without touching the adjacent ones (I'm a hamfisted player, I guess). Here it is:
This is a vast improvement over the first, structurally, visually, and acoustically. I have repaired the soundboard on the first and converted it to a six-course lute, but I have not been able to improve the treble sustain. I now believe this to be a problem with the bowl, whose joints are reinforced with small strips of wood, instead of paper.
In between these two lutes I took an excursion into the land of the hurdy-gurdy. I followed plans from a Musicmaker's kit and used some hardware that they sell, but the wood is all proper soundwood. However, it's a cranky instrument in more than one way:
A note on the oud.
Related Links
The Lute: A Brief History by Ronn McFarlane
Guild of American Luthiers
Lute Society of America
Early Music Society of Nova Scotia