Fingers only vs hybrid

Playing Technique
#1

Hi !
As a former classical player and electric player, I’m wondering if the “one finger less” due to pick holding is so limitative compared to all fingers.

we don’t use pinky that much in classical music, right hand.

But loosing one finger with thumb/index pick holding is a real loss, as they are the main fingers, with major.

I’m torn between going “full fingers” Mancuso like only for anything apart rythme (as I play metal with palm mutes).
Or just learn hybrid picking and deal with the “one finger lost” covering only 3 strings (because I don’t see a massive pinky usage to compensate).

Any help is welcome :sunglasses:

#2

It seems to me that your choice of music will dictate the answer to your question. Some music will effectively require a pick, and other music will be flexible, and some will prefer fingers…

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#3

Hello. Maybe I can help. I completed my classical guitar studies a year ago. Up until now I have been practicing fingerstyle on the electric.

The learning curve has been steep, the technique is similar but not identical classical. You would need to get used to having really short nails, at least that was the case with me. Longer nails would catch on the steel strings, something I never encountered on nylon. I use more internal rotation of the right hand when playing rest stroke scales on electric. Use of rest stroke itself is essential if you want a sonic result that resembles the sound of a pick. Palm muting is out of the question, if there is a way, I don’ t know it.
That said, it is doable. Here are a couple of short videos I made recently, I hope the mods don’ t consider this advertising :stuck_out_tongue:

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#4

Killer playing! Great tips, also.

#5

Oh yeah! Very nice work! Thanks for sharing!

#6

I already know I will never abandon pick.
Because I play metal rock mainly.
Palm mute is mandatory.

I’m not going to be Mancuso :grin:
Switching between finger style and pick in a song is not going to be fun.

So I will put another tool in my electric tool box : hybrid picking.

Because I already invested much time in my picking (double pick slanting, economy, snap 1 note …).

Thanks for those answers !
You helped me take an important decision.

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#7

Danny Gatton was an amazingly skilled country player who built his style around combining pick playing and banjo rolls. His work might give you some ideas.

EDIT: If you’re more on the jazz side of things you can also look into Pasquale Grasso, who does wizardly shit with his hybrid picking.

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#8

Brett Garsed is also known for applying hybrid picking extensively, incorporating the pinky as well. Might be worth checking out. The pinky has more independence than the ring finger and is very capable if trained.

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#9

I would also recommend checking out Rick Graham and Marshall Harrison for hybrid picking.

I think like @kgk says though, what you want to play is going to dictate the technique.

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#10

Sometimes I wonder if with specialized nail care if it would generally be more doable to do most pick-things with fingers than it is to do them with pick. I mean for all the challenges you could list, you don’t have to figure out how to get the pick from one string to the next. It’s kind of comical how easy something like a 3 string roll is with fingers vs picking. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people’s heads exploded when they saw videos of Matteo Mancuso, and maybe in a decade we’re going to see more people trying to follow that path.

Especially for electric guitar, if it’s already kosher to run the signal through lots of different pedals or other processing within a DAW, it seems like circumventing some of the dynamics issues might not be too tricky.

So for folks who already have fingerstyle chops…I don’t know.

Just thinking out loud.

#11

I don’ t see this happening personally. One would need elite level classical guitar skill to be able to replicate what Mancuso is doing. I’ m not saying it’ s impossible, but the dedication and time required is ridiculous. Here’ s how you would practice a scale in classical guitar:

  • index - middle alternation
  • index - ring
  • middle - ring
  • ring - middle- index alternation the way you tap your fingers on a table
  • now repeat the above with free stroke

compared to practicing single escape motion with a pick…
One also has to consider the need for direct nail contact with a steel string that is 1/4 the diameter of nylon strings. The tolerances are way smaller. You can clearly hear nail attack when Mancuso plays, he doesn’ t use his fingerpads to activate the string. So it’ s not exactly bass technique either. But very few classical teachers and conservatories teach the high wrist rest stroke position anymore. What he does is so unique, I would classify him as a unicorn really. :smiley:

Maybe someone (Troy) should study him

#12

As has been said, a lot will depend on the sort of music you’re playing.

There are tonalities that can only be achieved with a pick. The same holds true for fingers only. I know of no Metal player past or present that uses fingers only. Jeff Beck didn’t use one…but…well Jeff Beck. He could’ve played a broom handle and made it weep.

Andy Martin of Reverb.com doesn’t use one, but his approach is nothing close to what a trained Classical player would do.

I’m no classical player, but spent a LOT of my early years playing fingerstyle on nylon strings doing a variety of Jazz/Flamenco/Classical-style songs.

I’ve found pick and fingers (aka hybrid) to be an excellent compromise. In Rock and Metal, the extra digit isn’t a loss worth mentioning.

My two cents. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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#13

Just out of curiosity, why compare it to single escape specifically?

#14

My point simply was that there are far more permutations to practice with 3 fingers than with a pick.

#15

I don’t know, I mean, single escape is just one picking approach and relatively speaking it’s an extremely limited one.

I think there are way too many variables to say one way or another. For example you state greater # of permutations as a deciding factor, but that’s independent of degree of difficulty. For example, and this is rhetorical, which is harder: learning to ‘master’ double escape picking movements for all sorts of awkward non guitaristic phrases or learning to ‘master’ fingerstyle/classical approaches for those same phrases? No one can answer that, really because it just depends on too many factors especially those related to the background of the individual. While getting lots of RH fingering combinations ingrained might be challenging, so many people struggle with finding good, efficient picking motions that can handle the music that they want to play.

And to clarify I’m really not predicting anything, again, just thinking out loud about possibilities. Maybe there will be some fingerstyle shredder in the future that develops a teaching method, does lots of lesson and courses and it catches on, who knows. I mean, I don’t think that’s likely, but kind of interesting to think about.

I wonder if it’s something that hasn’t caught on because of the innate difficulty of it, or if there are just approaches that can make it work that not many people have discovered yet. I wonder if there’s ever been anybody who got good tone and proficiency playing bluegrass on a steel string with fingerpicks or nails.

But don’t mind me, just procrastinating here.

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#16

I was always curious about this! With steel strings, do most hybrid pickers use flesh, or fingernails?

#17

I’d venture to say flesh but I could be very wrong.

#18

I think most I have seen use flesh. There will be exceptions of course. I have seen Martin Miller use nails. Rick Graham (though he isn’t surprising since he is classically trained). Brent Mason I think uses fake nails.

I have pretty strong nails but I always found using them extensively on non-nylon strings would damage them. Like if I played a fingerstyle steel stringed acoustic piece and then picked up my classical, the tone would be scratchy and I’d have to buff the nails before the tone I was used to getting on the classical would be where I wanted it.

I think if someone is exclusively playing steel string with nails, especially if it’s primarily picked but with the occasional hybrid strokes, no issues at all.

Another consideration is tapping, if that’s a thing you do very often. Any nail length at all makes tapping pretty challenging. So once again it all comes down to what we want to play. There is no single setup that let’s us play everything. So we have to prioritize and based on what we want to play and work outward from there.

#19

Mancuso himself said he use short nails and flesh.
Flesh probably when using his slanted rest position.
Because only nails borders are in contact.

Thanks for all those suggestions!

I still wonder if hybrid add so much, apart string skipping and instant “all strings”, witch I don’t need much, compared to gambale economy system.

Even watching Brett Garsed, I see he could have done 95% of what he do with gambale system.