The Silent Lute – Playing Chords

Hello, friends from the Wolf Packs and the Fox Kins — I’m glad you’ve found your way back here. Come, sit by my fire, listen, and stay a while.

I’ve put this off for a long time, but eventually, I have to start talking about the subject of “chords.” In earlier… well, stories, reports, posts—whatever you want to call them—I actually warned quite strongly against playing chords. The reason is that a lute doesn’t function like a standard musical instrument; it’s temperamental.

To put it simply: when playing the lute, every note seems to negotiate how it intends to sound, which makes playing pure chords for accompaniment something of a challenge.

EEEWWW, this is English again??? – Yes, my friend, for the  original German words, follow this path: schattenmaerchen.de

With 15 strings across 8 courses, things get even trickier because many strings must remain unplayed—they simply don’t fit the harmony. Consequently, there are very few instances where you can simply strum a chord the way you would on a guitar (whether it has 6 or 12 strings). It just doesn’t work; otherwise, it sounds dreadful, or—after just two or three chords—the instrument’s natural resonance becomes so overwhelmed that you end up with an indistinguishable, muddy mess of sound.

That in itself is already a tricky aspect of playing, given that the open strings vibrate sympathetically. For the ambitious lutenist, playing chords adds another layer of complexity—take, for instance, the issue of finger count…

You have a total of four fingers available for fretting,
You can “cheat” and gain half a finger’s worth of reach using *barré* techniques,
Yet many full chords require five or six fingers.

This presents two interesting challenges:

1. You cannot simply strum across all the notes.
2. You have to make choices—deciding whether to play the lower or higher register of the chord.

In other words:

When you cleanly arpeggiate and play a chord, you can create a fascinating depth that a modern guitar simply cannot match, precisely because the middle voices define the chord’s character. Add to this the lute’s unique ability to modify every note in real-time and alter the timbre, and you end up with an almost endless array of tonal nuances—making the whole thing hard to describe… After all, you might do everything right, yet the result simply sounds terrible.

Given the large number of strings, there are widely varied yet fascinating approaches to playing chords. And—ironically—with most of these approaches, there is hardly any way to cleanly strum across the chord; that would only work if every string had to be played and they were all conveniently lined up—a scenario that practically never happens. I’ll talk more about that later; for now, we’re focusing on core chords, stripped of any extras.

These chords avoid anything that pushes the limits of playability and generally require no more than three fingers. As a bonus, on a lute tuned to F, they take on an incredibly smoky, dark, or melancholic quality. We’re going to look at these today—and honestly, that’s enough for now; there is so much to practice here that it will keep you busy for quite a while.

But before we get to the chords: be warned—playing chords on a lute is… let’s call it “distinctive.” These chords are most effective when arpeggiated and played slowly enough for each note to receive its due attention. Playing too quickly or frantically will not create a sense of dynamic range; instead, it will evoke a hysterical mood—the exact opposite of the lute’s inherent character.

Remember: the lute is not a percussive instrument, but rather a vocal pole of tranquility where sonic textures are woven from individual notes. This requires time and fosters a slower, calmer style of playing. Rapid playing is best reserved for single-line melodies accompanied by a drone.

But enough preamble—here are the promised chord lists.

There is also the Dsus2 (D suspended 2) chord:

Omitting the third creates an open, floating, and almost mystical sound. It has a strong forward momentum and is excellent for building tension in transitions or intros before resolving powerfully into D major or D minor.

Dsus2 – 2 fingers

Dsus2 – 2 fingers
1 (g’) : X
2 (d’) : 2 (ring finger)
3 (a) : 0
4 (f) : X
5 (c) : 2 (index finger)
6 (G) : X
7 (F) : X
8 (D) : 0

So, fellow travelers, that’s all for today 🙂

See you next time!

Fian the Bard