David van Ooijen wrote:
I've made a new channel on YouTube.
I promised a pupil of mine to record '70 Easy to Intermediate Pieces
for Renaissance Lute' (The Lute Society Music Editions, 2009) on CD.
Will do, but in the mean time I've started making videos of all the
pieces, adding a few lines of 'explanation' where wanted. This also
partly in response to one of the people on this list, who said there
was no teacher in his neighbourhood, although he knew of a guy who
gave on-line guitar lessons. What I did is not a lesson, of course,
but perhaps it can be of help to those who are studying these pieces.
Have look at
www.youtube.com/LuteLessons
and tell me what you think.
David - yes, I know, I'm a lefty ;-)
Thank you very much for these instructional videos.
What I've been noticing about your fingers and nearly all of the
fingers of the others who have posted videos of their playing is that
as a group, you tend to have thin fingers. Or perhaps they are just
normal fingers. I know my fingers are not normal.
I have to wear a size ExtraLarge glove to cover the width of my palm
and the thickness of my fingers, whereas a size Large (and possibly a
size Medium) would cover the length of my fingers.
It's very hard for me to play a regular 6 course (Hieber pattern)
lute. When I finger a note, I tend to interfere with at least 1
adjacent string, if not both adjacent strings. It's no problem at all
for me to strike both strings evenly when plucking! I don't know if I
could only hit 1 of the 2 strings.
I just had a thought. I might do better with the fingering if I went
to single string courses throughout. But then, would the sound still
be the same? I doubt it.
Any suggestions on what a thick-fingered person can do, short of
buying a specially built lute? And then keep in mind, I have a hard
time barring the lute or a even guitar due to my short finger length.
I had no trouble at all playing brass instruments. :)
Best,
Stephen.
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