[Song Writer]

I played the lute for several years, eventually reaching the beginnings of being an intermediate player.

I stopped playing for several reasons:

While its true you can play almost anything on the instrument, it has what I call a "limited repertoire of traditional pieces" that lock one into playing certain styles.

Then too, the instrument has a limited tonal range and is not as expressive an instrument as a guitar.

It's lack of volume and sustain also are not to my taste.

Finally, it takes a lot of dedication in practice to "keep one's hands in" to play. I found that the time it took to keep up my playing took away time from playing guitar and writing.

For me, the initial interest was the English School of Lutenists and Songwriters. Once initiated, I moved on.

There's an old joke about the instrument: lutenists spend half of their time tuning the instrument, and the other half of their time playing out of tune.

Not trying to be a wet blanket here, these are just some of my experiences with the instrument. It does have a beautiful, if limited sound.

BTW, my instrument was a 13 course Renaissance lute. I would recommend that instrument over the larger and more multi-stringed Baroque lute for a beginner.