Day 2 - Yarr, There Be Lute!

[bpambberger]

At the time of writing this entry, I know how to do exactly two things on my lute.

1)  A single thirty-second song I learned as a lute tutorial, back when I was first starting out, from Youtube.
2)  Thrash chords to sing folk music to.

As a musician, I'm qualified to say that this sucks.  Time to learn more.  So today's ten minutes was spent digging around online to try to find some lute music, with the intent of (shudder) practicing.  I hear good things about practicing.

It took less than a minute to find this website here, which will serve as my homepage for the next little while.

Websites with Downloadable Tablature

Most of the sites on here are out of date (Quoth the server, 404) but there are some that I found that seem interesting.  Here are the links I dug up with intent to study later on.

1 - Petrucci Music Library

This is an online database of the world's public domain music.  There's a search function for lute solo, duet and triplet there as well, so it'll be a good place to start.  A quick test confirms that the site does indeed work and seems updated, and the results seem to be mostly scanned copies of authentic original books (a bugger to read), with the occasional scattering of digital texts and music (less so).  Enough to find a song or three, and maybe to copy some works onto the eBook of Boom for campfire nights.

2 - Lute Score Exchange

This is mostly here for me to chuckle at - the music on this website costs money to download, but they let you listen to it for free.  This makes sense, given that you should know what you're buying, but given my skill at transcription that's like telling a normal person "You're not allowed to learn how to draw this flag, but here's a picture of it."  I'll take a listen later on, and if I find any awesome lute songs I'll listen and transcribe them straight into the eBook.

3 - Sixteenth Century Ballads

Paydirt.  Folk songs and ballads.  Mostly without the music, but that's not necessarily an issue if I'm feeling creative enough.

Tomorrow I think I'll do some practice, and maybe check out some of those links.