Vance- I wonder if you have seriously experimented with playing this this way? If you can stand big downloads, I will happily turn an old recording of me playing F Da Milano (Ness 33) with just such a technique, into an MP3, and send it to you (or anyone who is interested)! If you know the woodcut of a lutenist from Marcolini's Intabolatura di liuto (Venice 1536), then that will give a fair idea of the way I play a 6 course lute. Doug Alton Smith actually suggests that the player may be Francesco....! The main difference is that, being tall, I cross my left leg over my right ,close to my left ankle, and this raises the lute to a position higher up my chest, like the player in the woodcut. Why do I bother? Well, I feel there is an inherent conflict between the standard LH technique taught to lutenists today(which is basically the same as modern classical guitar technique), and the low neck angle needed for historical thumb under RH technique. I don't for a minute think that everyone should follow my example, and I believe, as I said, that it is not suitable for later repertories or for lutes with more than 6 courses-the wider neck makes it impractical. I do find it helps in several important respects. 1.The very narrow necks of surviving 6 course lutes are usually widened by modern makers of replicas. Mine is not, and when playing with the neck "cradled", I find that the fact that the left hand lies against the neck, results in the left hand fingers falling on the strings either perpendicular to the fingerboard, or beyond perpedicular. This lifts the pad of my (quite broad) fingertips away from strings they might otherwise foul, while the fingernails act as a "fence" to prevent the pad of the finger spreading out on the other side. 2. I find that when shifting positions, I don't need to use guide fingers so much, as the light contact of the hand on the neck serves as a guide instead. A similar effect is apparent with rapid and complex chord changes-it is easy to move all the fingers at once, rather than stabilising my hand with finger contact. 3. I have a long upper body, and if I try to play with a low neck angle, standard modern LH technique makes my left shoulder drop, causing tension and back pain. This problem disappears with the thumb wrapped round the neck.
I should make it clear that while I can happily play simple music standing up without a strap, I would alway sit down for more complex music. It is also worth mentioning that the thumb over the neck technique was highly developed by C19th guitar virtuosi such as Giuliani, who wrote many passages that are almost unplayable without fingering the 6th string with the thumb (often clearly indicated in the notation). Fernando Sor argued against this in his tutor-I'm sure there were similar arguments in the C16th! Let me know if you'd like that MP3! Best wishes Martin On 4 May 2006, at 22:21:46, Vance Wood wrote: > 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. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
