Eric Phillips Hey Eric, thanks for the compliment.  Back at you, I have always admired your sweet tone.  As for my dupuytrens, its main  impact has been on my pinky and "a" finger. My main workaround has been avoiding scales wirh my "a" finger, using it mostly for arpeggios and when I want to bring out a particular note either claro or dulce. As far as treatment, I have only had the "needle" treatment, no pun intended with moderately good results. I hope your mom has a good results with surgery.

Eric Phillips I did mean when I wrote the comment that slurs from open strings could be played by dragging a single finger across the two strings (sort of like sweep picking, I suppose) which is how I was executing them when I first encountered them. That seemed logical to me, but I don't think I was ever able to find evidence that they were played that way in the 19th c. The normal (perhaps only) way they were executed was by simply playing the open string and then hammering on to the lower note on the adjacent string without plucking it. The technique is explained by Carulli in his method. He uses the term 'vibration' (usually abbreviated as 'vib.') to describe the technique. I seem to recall that Carcassi also mentions it in his method. There are examples of this in Sor's music as well (i.e. in op.31/23 which you recorded year or two ago). It takes getting a little used to, because the slurred note is far weaker than what we are used to hearing today. But I think the idea that a slurred note should be clearly articulated is probably not historic - this goes also for ordinary left slurs slurs. I suspect the idea of pulling the string with the left (fretting-) hand finger as it is released for the slur is modern. At least, I have never seen the idea expressed in a historic source.

As for the pleasure of playing even a single note - I can scarcely believe it now, but in the months following my stroke, I couldn't manage even that. Well, that's not quite right - I could use my right hand to manoeuvre a left hand finger into position, and then play the note. But my finger would then be stuck in place, as though glued to the string. It's a rather amusing image, thinking back on it now. I might have given up trying altogether, but I soon discovered that forcing myself to do this daily for ten or fifteen minutes was actually an effective form of rehabilitation. Progress was slow at first, but noticeable enough to be encouraging. And strangely, the effect seemed to be global - as control of my hand and arm returned, so too did control of my leg and foot. And to a lesser extent, the converse was also true. In the end, I have recovered well, and apart from my ability to play my instruments, I am able to function more or less 'normally'. (I don't think anyone who encounters me in the street notices anything amiss.) I can no longer run (my longtime fitness routine) but I can cycle again! (I remember lying in a hospital bed in the days following the stroke, and what worried me most was the prospect of having to give up cycling. Somehow it hadn't yet struck me that I would have such difficulty with music. Indeed, when some months later I finally took my guitar out of its case, I was expecting to be able to play in at least a rudimentary manner - cowboy chords and the like, I thought. It was a shock to see just how bad my situation was, with respect to music. Today I can laugh about it. I have recovered well enough to get through pieces of intermediate difficulty. Not perfectly - but I suppose I could never play anything perfectly. I always tried to though, and it has been difficult to abandon the idea that that should be the goal. So today what I really need to overcome is an out-dated attitude!