Due to my Dupuytrens contracture (makes the ring and pinky fold in fixedly), I have a permanent, but surgically correctible (trying to avoid this) bend to my right pinky (left was worse but successfully corrected years ago). What works for me is resting the pinky on its side for my thumb-in playing. Which seems to be what Andrea Damiani suggests in his tutor--so that you're looking into the cupped right hand.
Leonard Williams -----Original Message----- From: Richard Brook <richa...@cs.dartmouth.edu> To: howard posner <howardpos...@ca.rr.com> Cc: Lute net <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Tue, Mar 5, 2019 10:17 am Subject: [LUTE] Re: right hand technique -- bending the pinky 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 <[1]howardpos...@ca.rr.com> wrote: > > >> On Mar 4, 2019, at 7:12 PM, Richard Brook <[2]richa...@cs.dartmouth.edu> 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 > [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:howardpos...@ca.rr.com 2. mailto:richa...@cs.dartmouth.edu 3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
