If you’re struggling to find song tutorials for your 7-string lyre, you’re not alone. It can be tough to find songs that fit within 7 strings. But don’t worry – there’s a solution!
Did you know you can play songs made for 16 strings on your 7-string lyre?
In this post, I’ll share a method devised by Frillix Underscore on YouTube, one of the amazing people I’ve met on my lyre harp journey. She plays a 7-string lyre and has been following my video tutorials made for 16-string lyres.
Her approach is really cool. With her permission, I’m sharing it here in the hopes that it will benefit you!
The method:
She tunes her 7-string lyre to these notes: E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5
For those who are familiar with my tutorials, I write them as follows to make them easier to read on screen: E F G A B C’ D’
(Notes with an apostrophe are in a higher octave than notes without. For example, C’ is an octave higher than C. Also, when you see brackets ( ) later, it means the notes inside them are to be played at the same time.)
In Frillix Underscore’s words:
“I had the same problem so I tuned my lyre to be E F G A B C’ D’ so I’d be able to play almost any song on this channel. The only problem in tuning the lyre this way is that you can’t play 2 of the same notes on the lyre on different octaves.
Example: (G G’) When that happens just play the singular G note
if it looks like this: G G’ – Just play the G note twice
Sometimes, certain songs have lots of different notes in multiple octaves that you may be unable to fit onto your lyre.
Random example, you might need E F G A B C’ D’ E’ G’ A’ for a song, but you only have 7 strings. First, you can just play C instead of C’ or you can experiment and possibly use D because it has a higher pitch, and it may sound better (or worse) but you can try that out.
Secondly, most songs use two hands, usually with one hand as the main melody, and the other with the background melody or beats. If you use both hands for the main melody, you can remove the extra background notes but that will take lots of time. If you want to play a song but the previous method didn’t work for you, you can tune your lyre to be able to play the main melody. It may not sound whole, but it is identifiable. (think of it like those piano tutorials on youtube, the easy versions have the main melody but most of the notes are removed to have the most basic sound)
It works but you may have to occasionally tune the lyre for certain songs that are higher or lower pitched of your song. This way works (for most songs) and I know because I learned a few songs already.“
