Tootler
Well-known member
Oh Wendy, Wendy, Wendy, that G-B interval is not a 3rd, it's a flattened 4th! Just kidding! More below.
It's noteworthy that the guitar is the only chordophone of any significance in the Western tradition that uses more than 4 courses
Viols and the Renaissance Lute all had six courses and were tuned in fourths - with a third in the middle. The Lute later had many more courses but they all eventually died out but were revived at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Renaissance lute had six courses with all but the top string being doubled they were tuned in unison not octaves. The "Standard" tuning was G C F A d g. There were many variations but the pattern seemed to be mainly the same with intervals (from bottom to top) of 4th, 4th, 3rd, 4th, 4th. (cf guitar 4th, 4th, 4th, 3rd, 4th) though other variants were found. Lutenists seemed to be as willing as guitarists to experiment with and use a variety of tunings to suit the demands of the music. Renaissance Lute music was almost exclusively written in tablature. I did a "try a lute" session at an early music summer school I went to some years ago and we were playing from tablature. Lute tablature is slightly different from guitar/uke tablature but the principles are the same so it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt if you were interested.
A couple of sites suggested retuning the G string on a guitar to F# will give you the same pitch intervals as a lute. If you then put a capo on the 3rd fret, you get G C F A d g. If you take a uke tuned to Bb tuning then tune the 3rd string down a further semitone, you get the same tuning as the top four strings of the tuning above. As the extra two strings of a guitalele are bass strings a tenor scale guitalele should work OK in G C F A d g without having to buy special strings - should you be interested, that is.
Viol tuning uses the same set of intervals, D-G-c-e-a-d' for the bass viol with the treble viol the same an octave higher. The tenor viol is tuned G C F A d g like the lute. Again, there are other tunings and the bass viol sometimes has an additional low A string. Viols are fretted. I once tried a bass viol but I found my hand wasn't big enough to reach comfortably between the frets.
Ukeval who has contributed to the seasons plays renaissance music on a ukelele as well as playing lute.