Picking hand techniques part two

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In this article, I'm going to be going over the two major types of fingerpicking in detail. The first one involves using your own nails on your picking hand as picks as any traditional classical guitarist will use, and the second one involves using the pads of your fingers for more folk oriented styles such as blues.

First up would be a classical guitarist's picking hand, and their nails. Classical guitarists use the nails on their picking hand to sound and influence their tone. While they also use the pads of their fingers in the same manner as other styles that use fingerpicking, I will be focusing on a classical guitarist's nails and how they affect playing. As use of the pads of a guitarist's fingers when they're playing is something that all fingerstyle guitarists do, please refer to the section in this article that discusses use of the pads. Stylistically speaking classical music is very different than fingerpicked blues, but the physical mechanics involved are the same.

The shape of a classical guitarists nails bears some resemblance to a guitar pick because there is a definite tip that tapers off on either side of the nail. This tip isn't centered but offset towards the guitarist's pinky finger on their picking hand. This tip usually extends approximately 1 to 2 millimeters beyond the tip of the fingers on the picking hand and is shaped in a specific manner to achieve an appropriate tone. Below is a diagram showing how you shape your nail if you're playing using your nails on your picking hand:



The first thing that is easily noticeable would be the fact that the nail isn't evenly shaped. In this picture, the point of the nail is approximately halfway between the center of the thumb and the side of the thumb that is closest to the rest of the hand. The entire edge of this nail will also be filed to be as smooth as possible. The primary reasons that all of the nails you use on your picking hand are shaped like this is due to the reasons that follow. It prevents the string from spending too much time on the nail before being sounded, gives balance to the overall timbre produced, and also makes executing any technique that requires speed such as a picking hand tremolo easier. If you choose to use the classical guitarist approach to your fingerpicking then it's very important to keep your nails in excellent condition. The detractions to improper nail shape are excessive string noise, unbalanced timbre that contains too much treble or too much bass, and more difficulty when executing techniques at higher levels.

The overall versatility of using your nails does have some drawbacks. Your nails need to be protected from chipping, cracking, and breaking so properly caring for your nails may be difficult depending on your life circumstances. For example, a guitarist may have a day job where they work with their hands frequently which increases the chances of damage occurring. This guitarist might also have to keep their nails short due to this job as well for any number of reasons making the use of traditional classical guitar fingerstyle playing impossible. The other major drawback would be that there is more difficulty in learning how to use your nails in addition to the pads on your fingers, as there would be more than one "correct" way of plucking the string. This makes learning controlling what part of your finger you're using essential due to the relatively short length of the nails. The advantage to being able to use nails in fingerstyle playing would be the wider timbres available to a guitarist, as well as having greater control due to learning how to properly use your nails and pads to their fullest extent.

Next up would be simply using the pads of your fingers to pluck the strings. Using the pads of your fingers is going to produce a meatier, punchier sound in comparison to a classical guitarist. The tone produced is also going to have less overall treble and be slightly less balanced as well, due to the pads of your fingers muting some of the treble frequencies that normally occur. One of the biggest benefits of this approach is the relative lack of care in comparison to a classical guitarist's picking hand. As you don't have nails that need to be kept in pristine condition, a guitarist is able to be more aggressive with their picking hand attack allowing for a different set of dynamics that may not be easily achievable if a guitarist is using nails.

Not using nails on your picking hand has the potential to make certain techniques more difficult to perform with fluidity however, as using the pads of your fingers requires more blunt force in comparison to using nails. The relative lack of accuracy due to the force required to sound a note makes performing anything requiring more speed more difficult. The initial power behind a stroke using the pads of a guitarist's fingers translates into more effort needed to control the greater force. However, having access to this increase in power gives you access to more aggressive sounds that would be more difficult in comparison to a classical guitarist's picking hand as previously mentioned.

One thing that is universal to both styles is the position of the picking hand relative to the bridge, sound hole, and end of the fretboard. Below is a picture indicating the three major positions that a guitarist can position their picking had for variations in timbre:



The blue box indicates the default position for your picking hand for playing any kind of fingerstyle playing. This position provides the best balance of treble, middle, and bass frequencies that a guitar is capable of producing. The red box indicates the second position for placing your picking hand, which is close to the bridge. Classical guitarists use the term ponticelli to identify playing close to the bridge in this manner. The qualities of playing in this position in comparison to the default position would be a much sharper tone with decreased bass and mid frequencies, as well as less measurable sustain from any given note. This is a result of the string having less room to sound as the bridge inhibits strings from vibrating as freely as it does in the default position. The green box indicates the third position that your picking hand can be placed, and classical guitarists refer to this position as dolce. In comparison to the default position this position gives a timbre with heavy emphasis on the bass frequencies with more sustain. This is due to the string having the most distance between the bridge and either the nut or finger fretting a note, and this allows the string to transfer more energy into vibrating as the points that are choking it are farther from the area where the guitarist plucked the string relative to the other two playing positions.

It should be noted that the qualities of these picking hand positions indicated above hold true no matter what style of picking you use to sound notes. Whether you use a pick, hybrid picking of any variety, or any variety of fingerstyle playing changing the position of your picking hand is going to change the timbre your guitar will produce. There are also some techniques that can only be performed in certain positions as well. It's impossible to perform palm muting correctly if you're choosing to play dolce, for example. Due to where you would have to place your hand in order to execute palm muting you would be unable to stretch your picking hand that far. There are other examples of certain techniques that limit where you position your picking hand as well, and aren't limited to palm muting.

That ends this installment on picking hand techniques. In the next article I'm going to be going over guitar picks and how they affect your picking hand in detail. Until then, have a musical day.