Yup, completely different wrist position. I can't speak to the lute, as I'm too new (but I'm not sure I could find a use for a thumb stop except for an unusual "open" chord, or sequence. But the painting you direct us to could also be a "soft thumb" as the player turns to his fingers on the first course. Proper technique (as I understand it) would have him with his thumb under the neck - but I spent fifty odd (no wisecracks please) years playing guitar with my thumb wrapped around the neck rather than under it. Perhaps he is thumb stopping, and perhaps just a lazy hand.
But directly on thumb stopping, on the folk guitar which was my area (real traditional, not hippie folk), one used it for a transitional note to fill out a chord. (And when one was to young to make the full chord). Take a guitar G chord, first course/fret 3 - sixth course/fret 3 - fifth course/fret 2. A bit tough for young hands, or perhaps not needed. But the thumb stop for a full chord must also damp the fifth course. I don't know the full uses of the thumb stop, I haven't used it in years. But it seems to me it was usually matched with a thumb damping of the fifth course. Best, Jon ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 6:27 PM Subject: left hand thumb to stop bass notes This is a lute-related question. But first: I asked a question recently on the Google classical guitar message board about the use of the left hand thumb to fret bass strings in 19th Century Russian guitar music. I got some very interesting responses but not a definitive answer. What puzzles me about this Russian guitar music is that sometimes the LH thumb frets the bass notes (clearly marked with a special sign) and sometimes the LH fingers fret the bass notes (indicated indirectly). Often it's not made clear whether it is thumb or fingers. Sometimes, in the same passage of bass notes, one bass note is to be played with the LH thumb and the very next with an LH finger. Playing with the LH thumb requires a completely different LH wrist position from 'normal' - like you are strangling the neck of the instrument. Before I started trying to play this music I just assumed that playing with LH thumb on some bass notes would allow the bass note to be sustained below the melody. But very often this just isn't the case. So I'm pondering the musical or technical purpose of LH thumb technique. Now I think I very dimly remember some discussion of LH thumb technique (for stopping bass notes) in some lute music - presumably early lute music: lutes without the extra bass strings that would preclude this technique. And then today I was killing some time in Cambridge at the Fitzwilliam and came across this painting by Titian: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/pharos/collection_pages/italy_pages/109/TXT_SE-109.html (the first pic) Evidently it's an earlier version of a painting that is now in the Met in New York.(Google: Titian, Venus, Lute player, Cupid) Either version will do. The lutenist clearly has the thumb in the 'strangling the neck' position and nowhere near the 'normal' position that both guitarists and lutenists adopt today. (My wife was a bit baffled by my focus of interest in the lutenist's thumb in this painting but bought me the postcard nonetheless.) So: is there any evidence of using the thumb to fret bass notes in lute music? If so, do any lutenists today use this technique? And then, what is the musical or technical reason for it? ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com - virus-checked by McAfee - visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
