I am very grateful to all who have responded with so much helpful advice. Gentle exercise of some sort is certainly necessary for my index fingers, which seem to have lost a lot of strength and are really slow and clumsy; Anthony Hind's advice here sounds extremely useful. Rob's warning, however, about over-strengening is taken; his tip concerning minimal pressure is very helpful - I've just got back home and had an initial go at it on my viola da mano... He's right: I've been working too hard! Ed Martin's endorsement demands respect too: another admirable musician. I am also intending to look closely at the thoughtful advice from Ed Durbrow - I also intend, in July (birthday!), to get a recording device (I've been very interested in comments on one of these groups' pages about the relative merits of different inexpensive recording devices, the Zoom H2, for example). Just as I am coming to an end here, I see I've received advice from David Rastall which promises to take me into other fruitful areas.
I have made a point of mentioning by name everyone whose advice I have received because I suspect I haven't received all correspondence on this subject. Apologies to those not mentioned, therefore - I simply didn't receive your message, so please don't think me rude. When I read through my initial request for help in this matter before sending it off, I realised that it was rather ambiguous: my intended request was for advice on musical exercises (simple little preludes and suchlike). I decided not to change the wording, however, as it occurred to me that there might well be other advice of use that I might receive - and I have certainly not been disappointed. My sincere thanks to you all - and now... I must return to my viola da mano and start learning to tread lightly! Alan -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users. It has removed 1682 spam emails to date. Paying users do not have this message in their emails. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
