One scale, cut to length
Every lyre above plays the same thing: C major, one string per note, no sharps and no flats anywhere on the instrument. There is nothing to fret, nothing to stop and no way to play a wrong note in the key — which is most of why a lyre is the instrument people pick up when they have never played anything.
The string count does not change the tuning. It only decides how much of that one scale you get, and where your slice starts.
| Size | Range | Notes, lowest string first |
|---|---|---|
| 7-string | C4 – B4 | C D E F G A B |
| 10-string | A3 – C5 | A B · C D E F G A B C |
| 16-string | G3 – A5 | G A B · C D E F G A B · C D E F G A |
Notice what does not move: middle C through B sits in the same place on all three sizes. That shared octave is why a tab written for a 16-string usually plays on a 7-string as long as the melody stays in the middle register, and it is the fastest way to check you have found your bearings — the string labelled 1 with no dot on it is middle C, on every size.
Which string is number one?
This is the question that actually goes wrong on a lyre, and it goes wrong before you play a note. There is no standard for which side the low strings sit on. Ten and 16-string lyres are typically strung so the pitch rises left to right as you face them, while many larger ones rise the other way — two lyres on the same shelf can be mirror images of each other.
So do not count in from an edge. Find the thickest, longest string, which on a lyre is unambiguous because the strings visibly thin out across the instrument, call that string 1, and count up from there. The strings on this page are numbered that way, and so is every chart on the tuner page. If your own chart numbers from the top instead, the numbers flip but the notes do not.
Playing it with a keyboard
Every string carries a letter, and the letters run left to right across the instrument in the order they sit on a QWERTY keyboard — Q W E R T Y U I O P, then A S D F G H J K L, then Z X C V B N M. A 16-string therefore uses the top row and most of the home row, and because a lyre is laid out in pitch order the keyboard is too: the row you are typing on climbs the scale. Turn the letters off with the Keyboard letters switch once you no longer need them.
Two hands on a keyboard will play chords, which is worth knowing because it is the thing a lyre is genuinely good at. Hold three strings two apart — 1, 3 and 5, or Q E T on a 16-string — and you have a triad.
Why the whole song library plays here
Every song below is public domain and every one of them is checked, at build time, against the notes the size you have selected actually has. On the guzheng that filter is brutal: a guzheng is tuned to five notes per octave, so any melody containing a 4 or a 7 is refused, and only six of the twenty-one songs survive. A lyre has all seven, so nothing is refused for being off the scale — the only thing that can rule a song out is running off the end of the instrument.
Which is exactly what happens on the small sizes. A 7-string is one octave, so it plays eleven of the twenty-one; a 10-string reaches fourteen; the 16-string plays all twenty-one, which is the main practical reason it is the size to start on here even if the lyre you own at home is smaller. Switch sizes and watch the list change — that is the instrument telling you the truth about its own range.
G major, pentatonic, and what a real retune involves
C major is what a lyre ships in and what nearly every lyre tab assumes, and it is the only tuning offered above — deliberately, because the two common alternatives are not transpositions and pretending otherwise would teach a retune nobody performs. G major is the same scale with every F raised to F♯: only the F strings move, and the range and every other string stay exactly where they were. Pentatonic goes the other way and removes two notes per octave, so that no two strings can clash — which is why it is the standard choice for meditative and therapeutic playing, and why a 10-string is often set up as two octaves of D pentatonic.
Both are jobs for a tuning wrench rather than a menu. If you want to hear what a pentatonic instrument feels like under the fingers before committing your own strings to it, the guzheng on this site is one.
Cómo tocar la lira
La lira que ves arriba está afinada en do mayor: una cuerda por nota, sin sostenidos ni bemoles. Toca una cuerda, desliza el dedo sobre varias para hacer un glisando, o usa el teclado — las letras sobre las cuerdas son las teclas, de izquierda a derecha. La cuerda 1 es siempre la más larga y gruesa, la nota más grave: la de 7 cuerdas va de do4 a si4, la de 10 de la3 a do5, y la de 16 de sol3 a la5. Los números son grados de la escala, como en las tablaturas de lira y kalimba: el 1 es la tónica, un punto encima significa una octava más aguda y un punto debajo una más grave. Debajo del instrumento hay dieciséis canciones de dominio público con reproducción automática y un modo de práctica que espera a que toques cada nota. Si ya tienes una lira y está desafinada, el afinador de lira te dice qué cuerda se ha movido y cuántos cents.
Frequently asked questions
What notes is a lyre tuned to?
C major, one string per note, no sharps and no flats anywhere on the instrument — that is the factory tuning of essentially every lyre harp sold today. The string count only decides how much of that one scale you get. A 7-string is C4 to B4, the octave from middle C upward; a 10-string runs A3 to C5; a 16-string runs G3 to A5. Middle C through B is in the same place on all three, which is why a tab written for one size usually plays on another.
Which string is string 1?
The longest and thickest one — the lowest note. That is the only test that works on every lyre, because which physical side the low strings sit on is not standardised: 10 and 16-string lyres are usually strung so the pitch rises left to right as you face them, while many larger ones rise the other way. The strings here are numbered the same way, from the lowest upward, so string 1 on this page is string 1 on your instrument however yours is strung.
How do I play a song on it?
Pick one from the list below the instrument and press Play to hear it, or Practice to have it wait for you note by note — the next string glows and nothing advances until you play it, so you can go at whatever speed you like. The numbers on the strings are scale degrees, the notation lyre and kalimba tabs are written in: 1 is the tonic, a dot above the number means one octave up, a dot below means one octave down.
Why can the 7-string play fewer songs than the 16-string?
Range, not tuning. All three sizes are the same C-major scale, but a 7-string covers exactly one octave, and a melody that steps above its top B or below its bottom C has nowhere to go. The song list is filtered by whether every note actually exists on the size you have selected rather than by a difficulty guess, so what you are offered is what will genuinely play in full. Switch to the 16-string and the whole library appears.
Can I change the key?
Not on this page, and that is deliberate. A lyre arrives in C and the two alternatives players actually use are not transpositions of it: G major sharpens only the F strings and leaves everything else exactly where it was, and pentatonic tunings remove notes rather than shift them. A key selector that moved all sixteen strings together would be modelling a retune no lyre owner performs. If you have retuned your own instrument, the lyre tuner will read whatever it hears.
What is the difference between a lyre and a harp?
Levers. A lever harp carries a small lever beside each string that raises it a semitone, so it is normally tuned in E♭ major with every lever down and changes key mid-piece by flipping them. A lyre has no levers at all — it is one fixed diatonic scale, almost always C major, and changing key means turning pins. The pins differ too: a lyre uses straight zither pins held by friction in the wood rather than tapered harp pins. If yours has levers, the harp tuner is the page you want — and the playable lever harp is the quickest way to hear what those levers are for.
Does it sound like a real lyre?
It is synthesised rather than recorded, and modelled on what a lyre string physically is: plain nylon at modest tension over a small hollow frame, plucked with the pad of a finger. The model is a delay line one period long that loses a little energy on each lap, which is the actual mechanism of a plucked string — and it is why the note darkens as it fades without anything being faded. The audible result is a soft attack and a medium decay — about two and a half seconds at middle C, and well under a second at the top of the instrument, where a steel-strung guzheng at the same pitches would still be ringing at five.