>The whole point of what I am trying to say is that there is no >barr�. The 1st finger may sometimes have to cover two courses >instead of one, but it is not laid flat. It comes down on the >strings exactly as it does when you play one course.
Very sorry. I reread your post after I responded and realized I had completely missed your point. I just assumed you were making a mini-bar. Apologies. You must have wide fingertips. That is impossible for me with the spacing on my G lute and very hard to get clean even on my little A lute. Maybe I'll get it with practice on the A lute... For those who can manage it, however, I think it should be the first approach because it doesn't distort the hand from a normal position at all. Too bad I can't do it. > ______a____a___a___ > __a__2b_|_2b___b_|_ > ________|_1b___b_|_ > _3c__3c_|________|_ > _____4d_|__d___d_|_ > ________|________|_ >Your alternative fingering is the very thing I am trying to avoid. >My fingers are getting old too, which is one reason why I would >avoid unnecessarily tortuous fingerings. I don't find that torturous at all: one finger per fret basically with the first finger thrown in on the third course. This is so interesting. Maybe this is why you rarely see LH fingerings: Everybody does it differently. I think the key point here is to be aware of as many approaches and alternatives as possible and always use the reality check. That is, try each way seriously and see where it leads. I like the way you put it 'keeping the same angle'. Even though I can't play an Eb chord that way, I'm going to bear that phrase in mind and apply it to some other places and see where it leads. >I mentioned _Varietie_, >because it gives credence to what I am trying to say about that E >flat chord. It gives a lot of information about left-hand fingering, >both for chords and single-line melodies. Is all that in the Necessary Observations about Lute Playing? I'm going to have to delve into that again. >Yes. I would add that the guide finger doesn't have to be on the >same string. There's a nice example of this in Mille Regretz: > > |\ |\ |\ > |\ | |\ > | | | >_2c__a__a__________a________a_ >__________|____3e_____3e_|____ >_3d____1b_|_4f___________|_4d_ >__________|_2e___________|_2c_ >__________|_1c___________|_4d_ >__________|______________|____ > >The 1st finger has to jump from b3 (in bar 1) to e4 (in bar 2). >That's tricky. It's generally bad news if you take all your fingers >away from the fingerboard. It is important to maintain contact with >the strings, just to keep your place. In the passage above I would >add c4 at the end of bar 1, to be touched by the 2nd finger, but not >with the strings pressed right down to the fingerboard: > > |\ |\ |\ > |\ | |\ > | | | >_2c__a__a__________a________a_ >__________|____3e_____3e_|____ >_3d____1b_|_4f___________|_4d_ >______[2c]|_2e___________|_2c_ >__________|_1c___________|_4d_ >__________|______________|____ > >With the 2nd finger touching (bit not stopping) the 4th course, it >is possible to slide it along to e4, where it comes down for the >next chord. It's a piece of cake. :-) That's an excellent solution. I heard that Pat Obrien proposed a whole bunch of solutions for about 20 problems that Paul Odette came up with from Terzi's music. They involved all kinds of things like using the left hand thumb like the way a cellist would when playing high up the neck and many other novel solutions. I sometimes use my nose to make a harmonic when tuning. :-) cheers, -- Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
