Guild Wars 2

Enabling the tempo lock on your lute quantizes all of your lute chords to a global 120bpm tempo. This allows you to not only play in-time with yourself, but also to play in time with other tempo-locked lute players’ chords as well as people playing the Musical Frame Drum.

Unlocking your tempo allows you to play your chords freely, outside of the global tempo, similarly to how the individual lute notes are played.

Turtlebear.9136:

I would like to ask how come sometimes the lute “chords” are different? Despite pressing the same key, it would play different strums. I’ve tested this and noticed that there can be 3 different strums (or maybe more) from pressing the same note.

While each key represents a specific chord notation, different structures/performances of that chord notation can play on any given key for a variety of reasons:

1. The inversion of the chord changes depending on what the previous chord inversion was. This is done automatically in order to ensure the most natural-sounding voice leading, so you don’t have to think about it. Chord inversions included: Root position, first inversion and third inversion.

2. There are also variations. Think of them as several different takes of the given chord. (Take one, take two, take three). This is to allow extra diversity of the sound of a chord, to prevent repetitiveness.

3. For each chord type that is played, there is also an upstrum and downstrum version.

Turtlebear.9136:

I also don’t quite understand how we are suppose to duet with other players on a locked 120bpm tempo? Unless you’re specifically playing songs that are 120bpm only…

That’s right, if you and another performer (lute or drum) get together and play to the global tempo, you can jam out in sync at 120 bpm. But if you want to play songs outside of 120bpm and don’t care about tempo drift then you can always unlock your tempo and play that way. The options are yours!