Fingerpicking and the nail issue

[Chordite]

I play mostly with my thumbnail and also a bit of pattern and latin style simultaneous with the fingers.

Thumbnail is a tough little sod but a week of hard playing will see the corner turning white and eventually breaking

I have kinda settled on the idea of building it up with a UV hardening nail gel or possibly the superglue trick. I figure the UV risk is lower since I am just radiating the thumb not all five fingers

Either way I came across this little article which covers a lot of the bases on how fingerstylers deal with the question of how to use fingerpicks, nail extensions, acrylic, gels etc'

https://kenbonfield.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/fingers-picks-or-fake-nails-oh-my-the-dirty-little-secret-of-fingerstyle-guitar/

[gardo]

What naills ? I use the calluses on my fingertips and only use the nails as a backing

[Chordite]

Calluses lack precision and attack.

ps In your defense however

https://www.harmonycentral.com/articles/wes-montgomery--boss-guitarist

[Mikeo]

If the nails get too long they tend to break. There is a happy medium with nail length.

Cut them back a bit, and you can use clear nail polish to help them from not breaking. I like a little meat of the finger in my finger picking.

 

I met a professional stand up bass player a while back and he had calluses on the tips of his right hand that were actually kind of gross.

 

Try fake nails, if you must. James Taylor has them, but I knew that. He says in other articles he couldn't make through a tour without them.

 

If not having long nails lacks precision and attack, so be it. Tell that to Mark Knopfler. One of my favs.

 

Here's some close ups of him.

 

[video=youtube;vSU2EkTR6vI]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Freeman Keller]

I'll read the article when I get a little more time, but that is an issue that I have tried to deal with for my entire playing "career". I am primarily a fingerstyle acoustic player. I don't handle a plectrum very well, I have experimented with thumb/finger picks and never adjusted to them. I try to keep three fingernails relatively long on my picking hand, the others are all cut/filed short for fretting (and I anchor my right hand pinkie). I have a special problem with my right thumb nail, if I let it grow too much it gets a little hooked edge that catches the bass strings when I play alternate bass stuff.

 

I file my nails regularly with both emory boards and a diamond file . I fuss over my nails a lot.

 

I also work with tools, dig in the garden and climb rocks - all which are really hard on my nails. I am constantly chipping or splitting or breaking one of them. When that happens I usually file them all down short and bitch a lot. Right now I have very dry skin and there are cracks on a couple of finger tips - I'm bitching about that too.

 

I've tried super gluing broken nails but never been happy with it. I haven't really tried tissue paper, ping pong balls, acrylic nails or any of the other things people talk about but I've been very close to going to the nail salon a couple of time. Anyway, don't really have an answer but I think every finger style player has been faced with it.

[gardo]

Most of the time I use a flat pick Sometimes I just pick the bass string then flick the nails of the middle and ring fingers down across the other strings .I learned to play from an old timer back in the mountains.

[gardo]

I've never gotten on to a thumb pick either..

[Chordite]

Yep I pay attention to Knopfler and particularly to Jeff Beck since he moved away from picks

[Chordite]

I've noticed the hooking tendency increased as I got older, particularly on the middle finger. I keep them all a bit shorter these day to avoid that unintentional hook-twang in the middle of a quiet pattern.

[gardo]

i've been shaping my nails with an extra fine wheel on my bench grinder..no joke. If I'm working in the shop and damage one it's easy to just walk over and do them all . Something I've been doing for decades

[Grant Harding]

My strategy is like Mikeo - keep them from getting too long. I file them every couple of days usually.

 

I've currently got mine cut right back to nothing because I'm recording a bunch of keyboard and bass. Fingerstyle on guitar is still fine in terms of accuracy, but I miss being able to dial in bite as needed with the nails, especially when using pick and fingers which I do a lot.

[catscurlyear]

thanks for putting this up i noticed it a couple of weeks back and i`ve started putting super glue on my first finger nail and it hasn`t broke at all where as before it would have cracked a couple of times and needed some filing attention , i use my first finger instead of a pick at times and it takes a lot of pounding ,so is always gonna give way and break at some point.,,, think i`ll give the acrylic nail a try because the real finger nail does lack a bit in volume up to a regular pick. cheers

[Danocoustic]

I've smashed my fingers so many times, my nails don't grow right anymore. When I let them grow out, they're very brittle and break easily, as well as being very "irregular".

 

I fingerpick with bare fingers a lot---just use the ends of the fingers. I also use steel ProPiks quite a bit---the "F-Tone" model with cutaway openings for the pad of the finger. I can get different attacks with them. National torty plastic thumbpick.