Lute

This ancestor of the guitar has a pear-shaped
bowl and a distinctive bent neck with frets for fingering.
Between four and eight strings stretch between the base
of the bowl and the top of the neck. Lutes vary between
30 and 36 inches in length, with the bowl taking up
some two-thirds of that total. The musician either strums
or plucks the strings to produce music.

A highly versatile instrument because of its wide
range of notes and inflection, the lute is accessible to
the beginner but capable of great subtlety in the hands
of a master. The deep bowl gives it a rich, full sound un-
like that of any other stringed instrument. It is by far the
most popular instrument with bards, especially half-elf
and human ones.

Bardic Music

The most popular of the three prime
bardic instruments, the lute enables a performer to
maintain one bardic music or virtuoso performance ef-
fect while initiating another. Thus, a bard could maintain
inspire competence on one listener while using suggestion
on another.