Dear Francesco (and all),
just a few further thoughts, sorry for answering lately. Francesco wrote: > Perhaps they decided to change to thumb out for other technical > reasons. I guess it's simpler to play thumb out with many courses, due > to the much wider distance the thumb must reach, and also because in > the music for these larger instruments the thumb must use the lower > strings a lot more than for Renaissance repertoire. At least with my hands it's in no way easier to play thumb-out on low bass courses. If I want to keep the little finger on the soundboard and away from the first course, the thumb virtually is _in_ when lying on e.g. the 11th course. Interestingly it only seems to work when the little finger rests on/under the bridge or behind it, so that you have a little space for upward movement without touching the strings. > As you pointed out > the thumb out move the point where it plucks the string a lot forward > and this can make the sound sloppy on the thick gut basses. The answer > might have been to move the hand towards the bridge in order to regain > a clear and full sound on the basses. And a harsh sounding upper register at the same time. I noticed that strings have several "sweet spots" of different colour which are related to the points where you get the harmonics. Usually we try to play at those very points, consciously or not. Just like the harmonics over the fingerboard towards the saddle those spots are ever closer together when moving the hand to the bridge and the colour changes rapidly (as the feel of stiffness under the finger). When playing in the extreme thumb-out position very close to the bridge we see on so many paintings with musicians in a playing posture (and I think one can judge them from mere posing), the middle and especially the ring finger _will_ sound much different than the index. There is no way of having a much lower tension on the first course or courses than on the following to compensate this if we want an "even stiffness" that is not just felt. So either our concept of baroque stringing is wrong and the tension increased towards the basses, or our concept of a pleasant and well-balanced sound through all registers does not match baroque aesthetics. Please correct me if I'm wrong... BTW, I seem to remember that Besard wrote constantly moving the arm would be unmanly and therefore thumb-out would be the superior technique. One point to the posing theorists :-) Regards, Stephan To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
