Hi all, Something I've found useful in executing those nasty jumps in the bass register: 1) Having the bass line in your head--and teaching your thumb to associate a pitch with a given course, and a musical leap with a physical one. To that end, I sing the bass line when learning tricky passages. When teaching the technique to students, I have them first do it without the lute, and then while playing (in the latter case, it's usually sung silently). As facility with the technique improves, doing it without the instrument becomes less necessary. 2) An aid in carrying out #1 is to have a copy of the piece in piano score. For a number of years, I played baroque lute almost exclusively from piano score, and it did wonders for the accuracy of my right-hand thumb. Cheers.
Timothy Burris www.baroquelute.com -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
