There are a couple of pictures of Pat O'Brien's right hand from the LSA site pictures of the Vancouver 2005 seminar:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/old/Vancouver2005/ThumbUnder1-RS.jpg http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/old/Vancouver2005/ThumbUnder2-RS.jpg Pat plays everything including lute, Theorbo and classical guitar with and without nails. The pictures show how he manages his nails. DS On Nov 10, 2005, at 8:14 PM, Vance Wood wrote: > The biggest problem you are going to have is the right hand. > Within that > issue is the use of nails, wrist position and thumb position. If > you hold > your right hand out in front of you with the palm away from you, > you can see > the obvious, there are two sides to the fingers, left and right. > (front and > back do not apply here) If you wish to keep nails for playing the > Guitar it > is possible for you to play the Lute without nails if you adopt the > thumb > under technique which requires your fingers to point more parralle > to the > strings and the thumb striking the strings inside the motion of the > fingers. In other words the fingers operate outside the motion of the > thumb. You often see beginers on the Guitar assume this position > naturally. > This position allows the use of the right side surface of the > fingers to > play the strings and also makes it far easier to activate both > strings in an > individual course. If you trim the nails really short on the right > side of > the fingers you can play the Lute in the above position. You can, in > theory, leave the nails long on the left side of the fingers for > playing the > Guitar with the thumb out, wrist bent perpendicular to the strings > position > used by most Classical Guitar players. > > To try to put this in a different light that might make it more > clear look > at it this way. In Guitar position if you close up your hand your > thumb > will be on the outside of what is now a fist. In thumb under Lute > position > if you close up the hand your thumb will be folded under or inside the > fingers. Garry is correct understand and accept the fact that the > Lute is > not a Guitar, it is a totally different instrument with just enough > similarities to the Guitar to make it tempting to play like a > Guitar. Do > yourself a favor-----don't do it. Approach the Lute like something > from > Mars, something totally alien and unfamiliar. If you learn it as a > different instrument in the begining you will be further ahead five > years > from now than if you try making it like some odd shaped Guitar. If > you go > the Guitar route eventually you will encounter that point where you > understand that you are not getting a good sound out of the Lute > and must > change your technique if you are to improve. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
