I believe that left hand cradling does three things, two of them bad. One it obviously holds the neck of the Lute steady which is better than having it flop around all over the place because you have not found a way to secure it any other way. Two: it is the worst possible habit to get into that will affect your playing for years to come even if you find a way to secure the instrument without cradling it. Try playing some F DaMilano's Fantasies with this hand position. It may not be impossible but playing them well and executing the voicing cleanly is. This technique makes you stumble through passages where there are a lot of shifts up and down the neck, even if it is only one fret. Three: It forces the left hand to multitask and as such is a probable cause of a lot of physical problems down the road.
Vance Wood. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Howard Posner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lute Net" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 5:03 PM Subject: [LUTE] Re: lute straps > Martin Eastwell wrote: > > > The pictures show that left hand > > technique in the 16th century was often very like that used by modern > > folk and rock guitarists, with the neck cradled between the base of > > the 1st finger and the thumb, and so supporting the neck without any > > need for a strap. > > The pictures show that painters' models held lutes that way. I'm not > sure what they tell us about actual players. > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
