> On Mar 4, 2019, at 7:12 PM, Richard Brook <[email protected]> wrote: > > Heard via the late great Pat OBrien Paul O’Dette couldn’t bend that finger > down by itself.
To be clear, in Paul’s younger days he had the not-uncommon problem of having the left-hand pinky stick up when it wasn’t in use, which kept the fingertip inefficiently far away from the fingerboard. He kept being told, by people who hadn’t thought much about it, that the solution was to concentrate really hard on keeping it curved, advice which would have done more harm than good if he paid attention to it. The problem is caused by too much tension in the left hand, and goes away when the hand is relaxed, which is what Paul learned from Pat. Paul mentioned this in a master class (probably many times). I never heard Pat talk about it, though I’m sure he did. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
