Thank you Stephan for this link. Great to have all this info. As to using that left thumb effectively, I appreciate how you mention "the right" 6 course lute. Mine sure isn't, and it is not a particularly wide neck. On the other hand, coming from (originally) classical guitar which frowned vehemently on such LH usage, I have no skill or experience with this technique- which I have seen used by non-classical guitarists ONLY on very narrow neck guitars; but some of them do it with exquisite skill, rolling the hand into the neck and slipping that thumb over and onto the 6th string quickly, neatly, and accurately- then rolling right off it, and coming around almost instantly to do a full and very correct bar chord. I read somewhere that David van Ronk, (very large hands) could even fret the 5th string with his thumb.
Different story for me, and of course anyone with 7 or more courses. I dug out my Capirola and tried out the fingering that I posted hastily last night, (the essence of which involves using the 2nd, middle finger instead of the putative thumb) and all works very smoothly for me at any reasonable tempo. Nice piece, too- I hadn't noticed it before. I hope we can look forward to the day when some lute players- perhaps specialists in 5 and very early 6 course lutes- can show us these techniques in use. Dan >The problem of fretting the sixth string pretty much goes away if >you have the right 6-course lute and can stop it with your thumb. >This is a common technique with electric guitar and seems to be >indicated as a possibility in the introduction to the Capirola MS ( >http://www.marincola.com/lutebot1.txt ). > >Stephen Fryer -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
