Charles Postlewate: Five-Finger Technique

[Marion]

Has anyone read Mr. Postlewate's book 'Five-Finger Technique for the Right Hand', or watched his DVD? Is it worth purchasing? Is he the only one who published something on the five-finger technique?

[WILLIAM]

I HAVEN'T SEEN THE DVD YET BUT MIGHT GET IT MYSELF. I HAVE READ HIS ARTICLE IN GUITAR PLAYER MAGAZINE THOUGH ON USING THE PINKY.
HE IS KNOWLEDGEABLE AND GIVES GOOD EXAMPLES TO PLAY AS EXERCISES FROM PIECE EXCERPTS. I THINK IT WAS AN 1988 ISSUE OF GUITAR PLAYER.
I HOPE YOU CAN FIND AN COPY OF THIS ARTICLE AND READ IT. IT WILL GIVE AN GOOD IDEA OF WHAT CHARLES TEACHES LIKE I THINK.
I HOPE THIS HELPS YOU. :D

[racer_x]

The right hand or the left (chord) hand. Using the thumb on bass notes is pretty common for the chord hand. Not sure how the pinky would be useful for the right hand, unless that nail was grown 5 times as long. Interesting.

[dap22]

Hi,
The pinky can be used for many things in the right hand, although I personally don't YET use is. A couple things which the pinky could be used for are rasgueadas and other flamenco techniques of this sort (hence why the pink is C, as there is P I M A for the thumb, index, middle, and ring, C represents chiquito or 'small'...it is the smallest finger on the hands of many people). Another cool use of the pinky was seen in Kazuhito Yamashitas arrangement of Mussorgsky's ''Pictures at an Exhibition"..I think he was doing something like a tremolo with his pinky (yup, a 1 finger tremolo type thing with the pinky!) while P, I, M, and A were doign counterpoint. Talk about knucklebusting!
I am sure the pinky has many other applications, I assume Dominic Frasca woud use it in his guitar playing for percussive use or other things of that nature.
In flamenco music (not exclusively though) the pinky sometimes can be used in tremolo excercises and I would also assume pieces (although I haven't ever played a tremolo piece that requires four treble repetions) for doing patterns or 5 and 6. On this note, the excercises I have seen use P, C, A, M, I, as well as P, I, A, M, I and P, A, M, I A (the two latter ones do not use thie pinky as noted...)
I am interesting in learning more applications for the pinky used in right hand guitar technique.

DAP

[classicalgas]

The right hand or the left (chord) hand. Using the thumb on bass notes is pretty common for the chord hand. Not sure how the pinky would be useful for the right hand, unless that nail was grown 5 times as long. Interesting.

His website deals with right hand technique...

http://www.charlespostlewate.com/techwork.html

[selma600]

Eliot Fisk has some arpeggio exercises incorporating chiquito. I once found them online and just did a search but didn't turn the site up.
SOmeone else might want to try? In the meantime, I will try and find the print-outs I made...the url should be in the headers or footers.