Below I use the word "jerk" several times. I suspect there may be a more elegant and accurate verb. If so, please excuse me.
A few weeks ago I watched a bluegrass mandolin player. This man had won a (Texas?) state bluegrass mandolin championship, and, as one might suppose, he could quite fast. In watching him play, I immediately noticed the large degree to which his mandolin "jerks around" (for lack of a better phrase) while he's playing, with no tendency to jerk less during the fastest and most intricate passages, or indeed even during the quieter passages. This contrasts starkly with my modus operandi, which is to stabilize the lute as much as possible, in order to give myself a stationary target, especially for my right hand. The obvious explanation for this is to suppose that the mandolin player's hands, and in particular his right hand, move with the mandolin while he's playing, and thus negate the effect of the "jerking". But, in playing the lute, my right hand is, more or less, glued to the lute in that my little finger rests on the soundboard and my forearm rests on the lute's edge close to the strap button. All this leaves me fairly confused. Do all elite lute players keep their little fingers and forearms solidly on the lute? Do they stress this in their teaching? Do they present this as part of the technique needed to play fast? Do any of them play with "jerking" lutes? Have any of this list's readers worked through this issue personally? To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
