Okay, so I’ve been working late, and I don’t quite have time to write anything just now. But I just couldn’t resist the coincidence. The lyre arriving *now*, of all times, is superb. How’s that for timing? :)
Your Seikilos Epitaph is legitimately impressive, by the way. And the guest appearance of the horse at the end of the sample track for the new lyre made me smile!
Despite the construction work going on in the apartment above mine, I managed to record a bit.
My main lyre:
The Luthieros lyre:
(I played it a little differently in this one because my fingers got too sore from doing harmonics. You also might be able to hear a meow here and there, my cat wanted me to come out and play.)
Thanks so much for recording these! Especially with the construction work going on around you. Commiserations about that, by the way. I know that can be a *real* pain. Oh, and hello off-screen cat! *waves*
This is a really great way of demonstrating the differences between these instruments. It’s interesting making a comparison based just on sound, since that avoids any distractions based on the look of an instrument (which is obviously important, but it's nice to focus on sound). And the comparison is fascinating. You’re weren’t kidding. These three lyres sound remarkably different!
For what it’s worth, here are my thoughts, speaking as a professional musician who isn’t a string-player.
Main lyre:
I’ve already talked about this lyre before! Still, as a quick summary, this instrument has a gloriously rich tone, one that’s full of colour. And this richness extends throughout the range of the instrument. I really like the tone of this lyre. I could listen to it all day!
Luthieros lyre:
This is an interesting one. When I first listened to this recording, the tone of the instrument repelled me a little. The opening sounded a little off-putting. But the lyre’s tone grew on me the more I listened to it. Once I’d listened to the whole track, and gotten used to the instrument, nothing sounded particularly strange if I went back and listened to the opening again. On reflection, I don’t think that’s any fault of the lyre itself. I think what’s happening there is that this lyre is tuned slightly differently to your main lyre. I don’t mean that either was out of tune – just that they were tuned slightly differently compared to each other. That small difference in tuning was throwing me off, which was clouding my judgement a little!
But, that aside, the tone itself is interesting. There’s a significant difference between this and your main lyre, but I’m not sure quite how to describe what that is. The Luthieros lyre is definitely not as rich in tone as your main instrument. But there’s another quality there. The tone sounds slightly more fluid to me. It almost seems as if the strings are a little looser somehow, although I don’t think that’s how the physics works! My guess is that the individual notes might be slightly more resonant on this instrument? Perhaps the notes sound slightly longer, which is giving that fluid quality I’m hearing? Whatever the cause, the fluid quality of the notes works nicely in the faster-moving sections.
I was also struck by the tone across the range. Your main lyre has a fairly even tone, but this one has more variation. At least to my ears, I think it produces its best sounds in the middle register, but is perhaps a little lacking at higher pitches. Incidentally, without wishing to labour the point, it’s interesting to hear that my gut feeling about the resilience of these instruments wasn’t entirely unfounded!
If I were to use an analogy, the tone of your main lyre is like syrup, and the Lutherios lyre is like custard. It’s less rich, but flows a little more easily. In any case, while there is something nice about the fluidity, I very much prefer the overall richness of your main lyre!
New lyre:
Now this is something else altogether! I know this will partly be due to you playing a little differently, but there’s a gorgeous clarity of the sound here. The sound is so crisp and clear. It makes me think of cut glass. Or perhaps, to continue the food analogy, sugar-glazing!
From my perspective, this lyre combines a beautiful, crisp tone with some of the fluidity of the Luthieros lyre. So I guess, in a sense, it’s something of a middle-ground between your main lyre, and the Luthieros one. Also – and apologies if there’s a proper term here that I don’t know – I think the glissandi work particularly well on this instrument. While I was pretty impressed by the sample you posted above, this track has *really* impressed me. This lyre produces a very nice sound indeed!
And yet it’s small, and cheap! That’s just remarkable. I think the sound of this instrument compares very favourably to the Luthieros lyre. But it’s a fraction of the cost and, from the sounds of it, much, much more practical both to play and transport! Again, you weren’t kidding. This lyre really shouldn’t sound anything like this good. But, wow, doesn’t it just! You’ve made something super impressive here: a practical, affordable instrument that makes a wonderful sound. You have the evidence to prove it too! For my money, I get the impression this instrument would work particularly nicely in a small chamber setting (Asterion playing to Luke and Kota comes to mind).
If I saw a lyre of this price in a shop, and it produced a sound like this, I would *strongly* consider buying it! Very nicely done. I think you’ve done some really exciting here!
But, just to continue the comparison a little, I’ve now had time to have a listen to the videos you showed of the very cheap lyres. And ... okay, so they obviously weren’t going to be great, but I really see why you didn’t stick with an instrument like that. Wow. For me, the tone itself is off-putting. The metal strings produce a sound that’s pretty harsh, at least to my ears. That might work for some modern instruments, but I’m not sure it works well in this case. Surely the tone of a lyre should be much warmer than that? And, as you said, there’s a really serious problem with excessive resonance. The notes really bleed together, which must make complex songs almost impossible to play. It would be like playing Bach in a boomy bathroom – you’d just hear mush!
And here are a couple of quick other points on your last point. It’s great to hear that you’re going to be including your own playing in the game! I look forward to hearing it! I’m also quite pleased to hear of your plans for Asterion’s lyre experiments too. I think I may have mentioned this before but, given how important music is to him, it makes a whole lot of sense to me that Asterion would have done some experimenting with the lyre. Perhaps especially as he came across new ideas from visitors to the hotel. I’m guessing he might have gone in a bunch of different directions before coming up with something that he particularly liked. I’ll be really interested to see where you go with that!
Also, this, all the way:
Incidentally: it will be really funny if at some point in the future someone discovers that the Minoans did make lyres like this and they look back on it being independently developed as a speculative exercise for a minotaur-fucking gay game. That will be one hell of a story.
I’m having great fun imagining how journals would reference this. And thinking of carefully chosen snapshots from the Hotel featuring in lectures and seminars! :)
(Finally, my last few posts all mentioned that I wanted to reply sooner, but wasn’t able to. I think I jumped the gun there, because today I have the most absurd reason of all. I'm really, *really* not someone who likes bragging, but this one’s so incredibly unusual that I can’t quite resist. So: I couldn’t reply sooner this time because I was performing for my country’s King – in a room guarded by people wielding *actual, real-life pikes*. Pikes are way longer than I ever thought they’d be, by the way. This is why I like work in music, because you end up doing all sorts of crazy things. And no, I don’t do things like that every day!)
Oh, sure! It was a ceremonial civic event, where a choir and organ provided music while the civic parties were waiting for the King to arrive, and later when the King performed various ceremonial duties. The music at royal occasions like these is usually sung by the King’s own musicians, but local musicians are deliberately brought in when the King is travelling outside the capital (to encourage arts throughout the country, I expect). And he seems to be doing a fair amount of travelling at the moment!
As is often the case for big civic ceremonies in my country, the vast majority of the music was sacred. And there was quite a lot of it; there were over 20 musical items in all! Quite a few well-known composers were featured, including Handel, Howells, Franck, Stanford, Mendelssohn, etc.. I probably shouldn’t go into too many specifics, to avoid identifying the particular event too closely, but that should give you a rough idea!
Having said that, though, we did sing the famous work below. It’s something that’s traditionally performed at royal occasions, and appears really quite frequently. I think the King gets it multiple times a week sometimes, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s quite bored of it by now!
I hunted down this particular recording because it has organ accompaniment, as opposed to an orchestra, which matches the performance I was involved in. But I also happen to know a few of the performers who worked on this disk, and they reliably inform me that this track was recorded as a single, continuous take. That’s pretty rare!
(Anyone who doesn’t know this piece, be sure to listen until at least 1:30 – the first choral opening in this work is especially dramatic, and is worth experiencing!)
