Chris & All: The rest stroke for the thumb seems a logical means to both produce a strong bass and teach the thumb to keep track of diapasons, although there is no specific referral to this technique by name in any written historical source I've seen. The term 'rest stroke' seems to be a classical guitar convention useful in adapting to lute technique. The thing I find extremely puzzling in the 'awful lot of paintings' you mention is that, for late 16th and almost all 17th century examples, there is a nearly uniform depiction of a thumb-out technique, which is also described clearly in written sources. With one exception, nearly all our notable baroque lutenists of today use a thumb-under technique. This even applies to a lutenist I've seen in a recent video who is described as never having played renaissance lute. What gives? Why don't baroque lutenists today use what is an unquestionably obvious historical technique? I admit to not having paid much attention to this issue in the past. Sincerely puzzled, Ron Andrico www.mignarda.com > Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:10:57 -0800 > To: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu; dwinh...@comcast.net > From: chriswi...@yahoo.com > Subject: [LUTE] Re: Thumb rest stroke > > I've seen Paul O'Dette use repeated rest strokes in the bass, sometimes for fairly fast lines that I would take with p-i alternating (free) strokes. On the other hand, I've seen Robert Barto occasionally use rest strokes in the treble. > > There are an awful lot of paintings (especially, but not exclusively, baroque) in which the players are clearly using a rest stroke with the fingers a la classical guitar. In most of these the player is obviously tuning; in some, its not so clear. I know of no printed instructions, however. > > Chris > > > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html __________________________________________________________________
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