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This article was spun off from the main article, Several Ways to Sing the Psalms
Singing the Psalms with a Lyre
Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! (Psalm 98:5 ESV)
The two terms are often used interchangeably, but the lyre is more ancient and existed before the harp. The lyre was also smaller and more portable than a harp. David apparently carried around a lyre and played it as he watched over his sheep in the field. Over the years, I have seriously considered buying a harp or lyre to accompany me when I sang the Psalms. But I really didn't want to master a new instrument. The Pentatonic Scale Then I discovered something a game changer: a pentatonic lyre. The pentatonic scale has only five notes and is very ancient and seems to exist in all cultures. Which notes are omitted? On the Do-Re-Mi scale they would be Fa and Ti; they don't get along with the others in some situations. The remaining five notes sound great together no matter how you arrange them. If you play the black keys on a piano you will hear the pentatonic scale in F#. The gaps in the black keys are where the troublesome kids Fa and Ti would have been.
Here are some familiar tunes in the pentatonic scale:
If you're still not sure what the Pentatonic scale sounds like, search the web for My Girl by The Temptations and you will hear a pure Pentatonic scale played twice in a row in the guitar intro and then continue in the background. You won't forget it. Why would a pentatonic lyre be a game changer? Because making music on a pentatonic scale comes naturally and intuitively. It will allow you to pluck any string in any order and make music without trying. This is the perfect for people who have never played a musical instrument in their lives. Now you can. The 7 string lyre Although the Bible does mention a ten-string lyre, the lyre of seven strings was apparently more common in ancient cultures and had spiritual significance.
When I got my lyre it was better than I had expected; soon after I took it out of the package and tuned it, I was able to make music just by plucking strings at random. Lyres are especially helpful in situations where you chant the Psalms silently. The lyre can accompany the chanting in your head and give you a voice. Most 7 string lyres of this type are in the key of G. The notes are (from low to high) D E G A B D E. Two of the notes (D and E) appear twice (at both ends) and allow you to play more complete melodies, including Amazing Grace. On this particular lyre, the thicker strings are on the left, just like a guitar. Some lyre makers put the strings in the opposite order, but I recommend you get one with the thick strings on the left. The third string from the left would then be Do on the Do-Re-Mi scale.
In the video to the right, I'm playing a very simple pattern of just three notes which center on the fourth string. The lyre can be played with either a pick or fingers. I tend to use two fingers and the thumb. I always try to keep my index finger or thumb on the first note so I can come back to it easily. There are several makers who produce these lyres, the most popular at the moment being this one. But these items come and go on Amazon, so if the link is broken, just do a search for 7 string lyre. They even have DIY kits. I chose one that came with a set of extra strings. This was very important to me because replacement sets for these lyres are hard to find (more on that below in the section on practical tips). Pentatonic Psalm tones on the 7 string lyre I have searched the internet for Psalm tones in the pentatonic scale that could be played on this 7 string lyre. It should come as no surprise that such a thing did not exist. Until now. I spent some time researching Psalm tones and then composed these. I played them on my lyre with the Liturgy of the Hours and made several revisions until I was satisfied with them. Finally I put them on a PDF called Psalm tones for the 7 string pentatonic lyre in the key of G. The image below is an SVG file so you can pinch out and zoom in, to see details. 
The format This is not an actual music score with five lines. It is more similar to guitar tablature where each line represents a string. There are seven lines for each of the seven strings, and they are marked with the letter of each note (D E G A B D E) plus their names from the Do Re Mi scale. There is also a red marker for Do. So you don't have to be able to read music to use this. I wanted this to be as simple as possible, and accessible to everyone regardless of their musical ability. There are five Psalm tones and each one begins on a different note of the Pentatonic scale. You will need all five Psalm tones for the Psalms and canticles in Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, so you can just start with the first one and work your way down to the last one each time. By the way, these are not quite the same as the improvised Psalm tones in the videos above which I made several years ago. I hope to replace those videos with better ones eventually. The three sections Each Psalm tone has three sections so you can play sentences or groupings of two lines or three lines (just add the third section for three lines).
Some breviaries including the digital iBreviary have special navigation symbols to help identify the number of lines in these sections. For two line groupings they mark the first line with an asterisk. For three line groupings they mark the first line with a flex (a.k.a dagger) and the second line with an asterisk. In the screen shot to the right both stanzas have groupings of two lines (marked with an asterisk) followed by three lines (marked with a flex and an asterisk). The notes If you are confused about the notes themselves, the first long note in a section is for most of the words in a line which are chanted on the same note. When you come to the final syllables, use the two black notes and the final hollow note. The final hollow note and the black note preceding it are usually assigned to one syllable, but they can contain more than one syllable depending on the word. When the final word happens to be "Jerusalem" or "unsurpassable" you will need to add those extra syllables to make the words sound natural. The hollow note is held a little longer than the black notes. It all becomes natural over a little time, believe me. The Hymn It would be a shame to chant the Psalms, but merely say the hymn because you don't know the tune. If you are praying the Liturgy of the Hours with iBreviary then you are in luck because on most days they have a hymn that is written in Long Meter. If you scroll to the end of a hymn you will see the tune's name followed by the letters LM or the numbers 8 8 8 8 for eight notes in each of four lines. An example of Long Meter is the Doxology or Old 100th (Praise God from whom all blessings flow...). But the Old 100th is not in the Pentatonic scale so you can't play it on this lyre. I was not able to find any Long Meter hymn tunes in the pentatonic scale, so I created one and added it at the bottom. Sometimes a hymn will appear in Common Meter which is followed by the letters CM or the numbers 8 6 8 6. An example of a Common Meter tune is Amazing Grace which is in the Pentatonic scale and can be played on this 7 string lyre. So I would recommend just using that tune whenever you encounter a Common Meter hymn. Permissions Feel free to print this out on your desired paper size. Then trim it and keep it with your lyre or breviary. The reason I added a copyright at the bottom is so that nobody would add one themselves and demand that I stop posting it on my website (who knows, it could happen). But feel free to use this PDF any way you like. Using this with a tablet and iBreviary If you are playing a lyre, you probably don't want to be fiddling with pages in a breviary. I imagine most people reading this have already prayed the Liturgy of the Hours (a.k.a. Divine Office, a.k.a. the Breviary) on an electronic device. It is so convenient with no page flipping, no ribbons, and no chance of praying the wrong contents on special days. That's where the split screen feature on both Android tablets and iPads is really valuable. I made the Pentatonic Psalm tones PDF in its tall and narrow format so it will fit in a split screen on a tablet. If you print it out, it might make a nice bookmark as well. The digital breviary I recommend for chanting with a lyre is iBreviary. As I mentioned above, iBreviary includes asterisks and flexes to signify groupings of two or three lines. This is a very helpful feature for chanting the Psalms. You can go to the iBreviary website or download the app (which I also highly recommend). 
On an iPad with iBreviary You can make your own
I made this set of Pentatonic Psalm tones for myself, and thought some folks might find it useful. Of course, there is no reason to use these Psalm tones if you have the energy and ambition to create your own. So I have also made sheets of blank staves as a PDF so you can take a pencil and come up with your own creations. You can also use it to make other simple tunes. Since the format is the same as mine above with seven lines and all the helpful labels, you don't even need to know how to read or write music. This is specifically for use on your 7 string Pentatonic lyre in the key of G. Practical tips for the 7 string lyre Here are a few practical tips I came up with to help you get the most out of one of these lyres and avoid mistakes. Tuning The lyre will not come to you tuned, so you will have to tune it yourself. They usually keep the strings loose and out of tune so they won't snap in transit. But my lowest string was actually tuned much higher than it should have been. After you first tune the strings to proper pitch on your new lyre it will take a while for the strings to settle, and they will constantly go flat for the first few hours. This is because the strings are still stretching, and will continue to stretch for a while until they settle. Even while you are tuning, you will find that several strings which were tuned have suddenly gone flat. When the strings are tightened, the tension on the instrument increases and shortens it slightly, so the strings go slack (and flat). You just have to tune the strings a few times until they stop going flat. After one day, my relatively cheap lyre stays in tune better than my acoustic guitars which cost several times more than the lyre. But some lyres will not stay tuned and you can even see the pegs quickly unwinding by themselves. I read a useful comment that said to just unscrew the peg entirely, and add a drop or two of nail polish remover to it and screw it back in. Apparently that will fix the problem. A clip-on chromatic tuner is really handy, and they are very inexpensive. Tuning a lyre is very sensitive, and a slight nudge will send the note up a few steps. So you need to be very careful to not go too sharp and accidentally snap the strings.
String replacement Fortunately 7 string replacement sets for these lyres have recently appeared on the market. If these sets are not available to you, you can try guitar strings. Off-the-shelf sets of guitar strings come with only six strings, and will have too much range of string gauges within the set, with the high strings of an extra-light set being just right, and the low bass strings being way too heavy. So you will have to buy seven individual strings instead of a set. I made a table with the general string gauge of each string of a 7 string lyre so you can go to a guitar store and put together your own set of seven strings. They don't have to be the most expensive strings in the store; I'm sure the strings that came with the lyre were very cheap to begin with. Just make sure they all come from the same maker (a store clerk can help you). On the chart below, the high thin strings are on the left and the low heavy strings are on the right because that's the way sets of guitar strings are labeled, and would be most familiar to guitar players and music shop clerks.
The numbers after the notes indicate their position on a piano. Here is the same chart with the order reversed, putting the low heavy strings are on the left and the high thin strings on the right as they actually appear on the lyre.
Make sure you get metal guitar strings with the metal ring-type stoppers (a.k.a. "ball ends"). The nylon strings have no stoppers and will probably be a hassle to fasten (I have not tried it). 
The ball ends can be seen in the groove. That white bar is the bridge. Concerning the actual stringing of the lyre with new strings, you have to first unscrew the tuning pegs a bit so that when you screw them back in to tighten the new strings, the pegs will return to their former height. 
The tuning pegs Also, guitar strings will be longer than what you would need for a lyre, so you will just have to cut them. Cut the string about two inches past the tuning peg so it will have enough slack to wind around the tuning peg a few times. Make sure to observe how the old strings were originally attached before you remove them. They should tighten (pitch goes up) by turning them clockwise. When I got my lyre, the strings had been wound around the pegs by only two wraps, as you can see in the photo above. I would have preferred four or five wraps. There are ways of anchoring the strings to the pegs, and you can find out more by checking web articles or YouTube videos about how to change guitar strings; the process is the same for lyres and guitars, and there are several ways depending on your personal preference. Let's have some fun Here's a fun tip that will make you feel like professional musician. Maker sure the lyre is tuned (these lyres are usually tuned to the key of G) and go over to YouTube and do a search for "backing track in the key of G" or "backing track in the key of E minor" which will bring up several videos. Then play along with your lyre, hitting any random note you like. You will be amazed; every note you play will fit perfectly and sound good (and you will feel good, too). That's why guitarists and other musicians love the Pentatonic scale for lead solos; it's a valuable tool in their toolbox.
First published in March of 2020, last updated on April 23, 2024
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The Psalms have many references to the harp and lyre.
Always tune the string from below the note and carefully tighten the tuning wrench clockwise to tune up to the note. Pluck the string before you tighten the tuning peg and use your ears to hear the note and eyes to watch the tuner. If you miss the proper pitch, loosen the string and try again.