John Rodman   Tue, 11 Jan 2000 08:02:51 -0600
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Hi.  I am a 43 year old Geropsychologist woking in a VA Medical Center in
Minneapolis, MN, and a chronic list lurker.  I am not a professional
lutenist but rather a novice at the most basic level.  I really connected
with a previous response that discussed the difficulties with learning to
read Tab (especially going back and forth from Italian to French/English),
paying attention to the positions of both hands (including "thumb under")
and trying to justice to the music simulatneously.  I dabbled with classical
guitar for a few years in my late teens, even attending the Guitar Workshop
on Long Island for a year before off to college and a paper chase that ended
up with obtaining my doctorate in Psychology.  During those years I
occasionally played my guitar but never  really progressed.  My favorite
pieces had always been transcriptions of lute pieces (a la Frederick Noad)
and I had passively fantasized about someday learning to play the instrument
the music was written for.  Quite by accident I ran across a lutenist
playing at a local art museum and I was hooked.  Although he gave lessons
and I obtained his phone # another 8 years flew by before we actually
connected.  The seminal event that soldified my moving in the direction of
obtaining an instrument and lessons was discovering the lutenet one day
while playing on the internet. Voila, within three months I had purchased a
Steven Murphy 8 course lute and begun lessons with Phil Rukavina.  Although
I drive my wife and two daughters crazy, I listen to CDs and play whenever I
can (about 1/2  to 1 hour per day) and absolutely love it!  My entire
repretoire consist of four songs but that doesn't matter - there is
something magical about playing music almost 500 years old on the instrument
it was written for!    My favorite performer is Paul O'Dette (hope to see
him some day in concert) and at this point in my development I am interested
in both early (Italian: Capirola, Dalza, Borrono, Da Milano) and late
(English: Dowland, Bachelor, Johnson) Renaissance Music for the lute.
Cheers to all!     John Rodman