Why do I need lyre-specific sheet music (or do I)?
I just bought my first lyre (it will arrive tomorrow). I have no prior experience with playing the lyre or even seeing it played up close (though I’ve watched a lot of videos of people playing it, and I’m sure I’ve seen it played on stage before). I play piano and ukulele. I use uke tabs when playing ukulele, but for the lyre, I don’t understand why I wouldn’t just use standard sheet music (either using the kinds written for singers or people playing instruments like the violin where the notation includes one line at a time, or else using piano sheet music but just playing the melody/ the part typically played with the right hand). Obviously, I would make sure it was written in or transposed to C Major or A Minor. But I keep seeing people referencing where to find music written or adapted for the lyre. I get why you’d need this for a 6-10 string lyre or if you just are unfamiliar with reading standard sheet music, but I’m not sure if the need for lyre-specific sheet music goes beyond that.
For context, although the lyre I bought is basic in terms of quality/ brand due to budget limitations (it’s Cega), it does have 19 strings with F3 to C6 diatonic tuning, so it spans 2.5 octaves. I want to play pop music plus popular children’s songs, children’s movie themes, and some ditties (Irish and American) that my grandparents used to sing. I’d also be interested in playing some songs from certain Broadway musicals (and I do have piano sheet music for the scores of a few different musicals). I understand that particularly Broadway songs and also some pop songs will extend outside of the 2.5 octave range, but I don’t really see it being a major issue since normally that’s just for the bridge or for a few notes or whatever in these types of music, and most untrained singers automatically condense songs within 2 octaves when they sing them, anyway. So I don’t really feel like it would be a problem to just play up or down an octave if needed…
Am I missing something, or is the need for lyre-specific notations/ sheet music/ adaptations limited to either lyres with less than 16 strings (I have 19, but I would imagine regular sheet music would largely work fine for 16 as well) or people who don’t know how to read standard sheet music or who are trying to play like, classical piano pieces? I’m asking because finding music written/ adapted for the lyre, and specifically for a 19-string lyre, for most of the kinds of songs I’d want to play (except some of the children’s songs) seems like it’d be pretty difficult, and I just genuinely don’t understand why it’d be necessary. But I also have no experience and limited specific relevant knowledge re: the lyre and so could absolutely be missing something here.