Actually, and likely off subject, I was thinking of the right hand pinky, and (not on the lute) whether you could hold your fingers up and bend just the pinky into the palm. I can’t without dragging down the ring finger, I think Pat said Paul couldn’t do it. But maybe the test was with the left hand. I do recall Paul saying how relaxation was the key to not letting your left pinky stick out when playing, and that works.
Dick > On Mar 4, 2019, at 11:26 PM, howard posner <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> 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
