Truth be told, and this was way before I got into classical, my first experience playing scales fingerstyle was p-m-i. It was in the context of Chet Atkins…which makes total sense why Mark Knopler adapted this haha!
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As an ex-pianist I somteimes use i-m-a when ascending and a-m-i when descending. I guess I’m pressiing imaginery keys after all ))
Though it works for tirando only. With apoyando I do strictly i-m or a-m-i.
As for multistring lines - this is more obvious since every finger has its own place and you don’t have much choice.
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I didn’t know about Chet using p-m-i! He is definitely an amazing player to check out as well.
Early in this thread, I mentioned Matt Palmer for a-m-i apoyando, and he is amazing with this.
Narciso Yepes played his fast stuff apoyando a-m-i, not his best performance here, but still impressive
Another alternative would be to use tremolo technique or p-a-m-i adapted for scale playing, like in this ridiculously amazing example by Grisha Goryachev:
Interestingly, the very first scale he plays at the beginning before the exercise is also apoyando a-m-i
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A crossover nylon string guitar was my gateway into advanced fingerstyle playing and this vid was what I went by back then for nail shaping.
I’d like to add some other tricks I found along the way. Keep in mind my fingerstyle is a mutant of classical style, steel guitar “pick blocking” (look up a pedal steel guitar vid on this for more info), and country style hybrid chickin’ pickin’. I keep my nails long and play in a hybrid style on electric guitar and 12 string (Roger McGuinn style) as well.
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There is a Goldilocks type of phenomenon when it comes to length. You want the nail to be just long enough but not too long. When I trim my nails now I hold my hand up with the palm facing me at a 90 degree angle. I work the nails until I can just see a bit of nail past the finger tip. Remember when plucking you want to use the finger tip when muting so you don’t have a nail “chirp”. I work with my hands a lot doing electrical work and I find this also reduces nail breakage. Think about the offset like you would pick physics with trailing and leading edges. Keeping them optimized will help you maintain your two handed tapping ability as well. If nails are too long tapping is all but impossible in my experience.
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Buy a clear nail hardener polish. This will save your nail breaking. I’ve never broken a nail while playing with this method. This is also useful for fingerstyle bass because bass will eat your nails. This is a must if you gig in my opinion especially if using nails to hybrid pick.
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There is a vitamin supplement called Biotin that will strengthen your nails (also strengthens hair) sometimes it comes in Men’s/Women’s multi vitamins check the label. I have relatively hard nails but I know some suffer from brittle nails.
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Keep a box of the acrylic nails they sell in the cosmetics aisle of pharmacies handy (I keep one, a file and clippers in my guitar case) Acrylic nails are a pain to file and the heat from filing tends to cause a melting rolling type effect so the clippers are a must to get a rough shape. Brent Mason uses the acrylic nail method at all times as far as I know.
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Finally a personal anecdote. I used to be a habitual nail biter. Through use of anti bite polishes and willpower of wanting that sweet sweet fingernail tone I stopped but it took time probably close to a year. If you are a nail biter keep one of those metal nail files close by where ever you are. I keep one in my car as well as house. Then if a nail gets rough you can fix it and aren’t tempted to bite it. I also used to cover bit nails with acrylic nails because it will break the habit as they are near impossible to bite. I haven’t bit my nails in several years.
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Thanks @Dissonant_Timbres this is good insight!
So true. Christopher Parkening says something about nail length that I never thought of. It is interesting. He thinks, long or short, it is the consistency of nail length between the fingers that matters most. Probably some personal preference, but I’ll link this because it’s as close to a controlled experiment as I could think any one individual has tried. He made plaster casts of his hands during times when his nails ‘felt really good’ to him, and found a common thread between these times. Sometimes, they were long. Sometimes they were short. Always, they were even.
Back when I was a college student learning guitar, my part time job was a dishwasher in a local restaurant. Not very helpful when trying to keep your nails!!! I did the polish/hardener thing. It definitely helped.
Did you find this messed up your natural nails at all? I’d thought of doing this over the years (though no well known classical guitarist, that I know of uses them). Mainly because I’ve always played rock while I’ve played classical. As you mentioned, tapping is tough with nails. I think holding a pick is too (I’m an angle pad kind of guy). I’ll admit, and it may just be because the traditionalists preach natural nails, it’s tough for me to think, on a traditional classical guitar, that you could get a tone equivalent to natural nails using acrylic. For other styles or any guitar with steel strings, sure.
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Hi, guys, and thank you. I am a nail biter and maybe it’s time to stop and the acrylic nails might be a way to go.
So far, in my vast inexperience, I’m finding that my right hand fingering for single lines depends on how many notes on each string are in a line.
For example, if a 4-note line has 3 notes on the B string and 1 on the G string, I might play it m-i-p-a.
But if a 4-note line has 2 notes on the B string and 2 on the G string, I might play it a-i-m-p.
My genres lean toward jazz, blues, fusion, and bluegrass; and when I’m improvising I don’t think about how many notes I’m about to play on each string. I just try to reach the notes. What I want to avoid is getting my fingers tangled up. For example, reaching for the high E string with my thumb if my next note is going to be on the G string.
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As long as you don’t go trying to rip them off and let time and wear loosen them then no. I wouldn’t go ripping at them after they are freshly glued as the glue that comes with them tends to be like super glue on steroids. They usually start to loosen near the cuticle over time as the nail grows.
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Cool. Plenty of good jazz players do fingerstyle. This site leans towards how to play pretty fast. How fast are you hoping to play? Depending on the speed, if it’s not too fast it may not matter. But if you’re looking for substantial speed…you’re going to have to have some type of constraints/rules/a system. Like @7th11th said:
Also, this is a really good blog on how ‘worked out’ string changes need to be at high speeds, even when improvising. https://troygrady.com/2019/03/27/tackling-bebop-with-john-mclaughlins-motion/
The basic idea is you form a collection of licks/lines/patterns that are pretty worked out and follows some system of efficiency. This is a vocabulary. When you improvise you’ll just be stitching these together. The more right hand fingers you use, the more options there are going to be though.
It’s funny, in a way. I’ve been playing about 55 years and I grew up on early Mahavishnu and Return to Forever. Before my wrist started to go bad I was able to flat pick the stuff but I never thought about how I did it or about how they did it. As time went on I got more into the finesse of Clapton and Carlton and Pass and Holdsworth and I began to play more legato. It took a long time to notice that my wrist was starting to slow me down. Once I realized it I fought it for years. A losing battle. Recently I discovered that I can play equally well with my fingers and in some ways better, and that it doesn’t hurt. And more, unlike when flat picking, I again have the potential to improve. So I’m trying to find the most efficient way to do that. I’m overwhelmed by how much there is to learn, though. Tommy Emmanuel’s approach to finger picking is wholly different than the classical or flamenco approach. I don’t have enough years left to master it all; I’m about to turn 66.
I already have a vocabulary. But I don’t think much about what I know. I try to push beyond it because each time I do my fingers keep some memory of it and the vocabulary expands. Each time I find harmonic or rhythmic concepts they need to be picked differently. The key is to be able to play them on the fly. Call it the system of no system, if you like, because it seems to me that the more one relies on a system the more one is boxed in by it, unless it’s a very deep system. E.g., you can learn chord sequences by playing tunes. Or you can learn the rules underlying those sequences and then when you read the tunes you can improvise variations that work. I’m trying to learn the deep rules of finger picking. Are there any? Or is it just a matter of playing a pattern hundreds of times and then going on to the next one?
As to how fast I want to play, well, I used to think McLauglhin and DiMeola were fast, and I was proud I could do it. Then I heard Shawn Lane and then Michael Angelo Batio and recently that guy in your video who was demonstrating four-fingered tremolo picking. I will never in my life be as fast as those guys. And they also seem limited by the patterns they’ve mastered. So my answer is that I want to play as fast as I can conceive, to pick every note when I want to, and do it with control of articulations and dynamics.
And I want to waste as little time as possible getting there.
Not really! The one big difference is, that he switches to flatpicking-technique with his thumbpick when he plays single note lines. His polyphonic playing is well within the range of classical guitar techniques. He is a big chet atkins fan, who himself expanded his vocabulary by trying classical pieces. Having tried a few of his Arrangements, I am pretty confident that Tommy Emmanuel could blaze through a lot of the classical repertoire. Might be a great thing, to finally hear a classical guitar piece played with real rhythm!
The fact that he uses a thumb pick is a minute difference in my opinion. It changes the posture of the right hand a little, but not that much.
Also, since you have problems with arthritis already, I would be extra careful with a lot of classical guitar ideas about posture and hand placement (footrest, right hand Positions with super flexed/deviated wrist). I would recommend @Tom_Gilroys vid about “the hand at rest”, because I think this is a great way to find a good and healthy playing position.
There are some great fingerpickers in these styles, Brent Mason for example, or as I was recently made aware Scotty Anderson. And again, Mark Knopfler. I am pretty sure that everything they play can be arranged for p-m-i and p-i playing. (Probably already is the way they play)
But you have to be aware how the string changes work, AND learn the licks. There is no total “freedom” of improvisation. Even with the perfect crosspicking technique that would theoretically enable every string change, you would still have to learn the licks, drill the sync between left and right, chunking etc.
I watched Gillroy’s videos. Very impressive analysis. Applying the hand at rest concept to my right hand, I find that instead of playing with a naturally straight wrist, I bend my wrist back slightly so that I almost rest my palm on the low E string. This creates some minor tension but a straight wrist lifts my hand too high above the strings and feels very clumsy, weak and unnatural. I just watched a video of Knopfler and he bends his wrist slightly back much like I do. I guess it’s a legitimate tradeoff. He also bends his wrist down sideways toward the bottom of the guitar. This lets his index and middle fingers strike the strings more perpendicularly than mine but it has to cause some additional wrist tension, no? He also rests his ring and pinky fingers on the guitar. I prefer to let my hand float because I think it makes wide string changes and fast scale picking easier and it lets me use the ring finger.
Here’s a question. Some of the classical guys reserve the thumb for the lower three strings and do all the higher-string picking with the other fingers. Travis pickers seem into that, too. But some of the classical guys use the thumb on all the strings and do tremolo picking with all four fingers. Is there a reason to prefer one approach to the other?
It’s because so much activity happens in the bass notes, both in classical and Travis picking…fingerstyle in general really. Walking bass lines in jazz chord melody etc. The thumb is naturally positioned there to begin with, plus it is a stronger digit.
There’s no rule saying to not use it on the treble strings. If we were playing some arpeggios on those strings and for a passage didn’t need the thumb for bass, it would be advantageous to use it instead of making i-m-a do all the work.
Regarding the tremolo and all 4 fingers…Not quite sure what you mean here. A classical tremolo is typically done with p-a-m-i There are exceptions. I think some flamenco players engage the pinky as well. The amazing and lovely Ana Vidovic plays here tremolo p-m-i-m. I might be misunderstanding the question since I don’t see how that’s an either/or as compared to playing with the thumb either on the bass or also using it on the treble strings.
In either case, enjoy Ana and here amazing playing 
A beautiful tune played beautifully by a beautiful woman. I observe that her picking wrist is not bent but hangs naturally – with the top of her hand an almost ruler-straight extension of the top of her forearm – and she can hit the strings perpendicularly because of the guitar’s tilt while remaining relaxed a la Gilroy.
Because I hold the guitar flatter, my fingers hit the strings at an angle and I think I lose some volume, fullness and consistency of attack among fingers, at least acoustically. Over-short nails also contribute.
But then, Tommy Emmanuel’s fingers tilt like mine, and it sounds like he picks with flesh and callous; I don’t hear fingernail. Could it be that the strings just brush over his nails which add subtly to his attack?
He is an awesome player. I love his playing but I haven’t studied it in depth. The few youtube videos I browse indicate no nails used though, which is fine for steel strings. Acoustic and classical have about as much in common as ham and hamburgers I think lol
Do agree. As a classical guitarist myself, I’ve successfully learnt some things from Tommy. Indeed it’s refreshing to be in contact with his work. To learn phrases, blues progressions and generally to improvise in the guitar using polyphonic techniques.
Another guitarist I enjoy a lot is David Hamburger and his Fingerstyle technique, I’d say his work is even more approachable for classical guitarists.
That’s true, up to some point. Yet, there are similarities, one can enrich as a classical player by learning from acoustic players and it works the other way around too.
By exploring the acoustic world I’ve found the blues and the freedom it gives me. From Troy I’ve learnt that by learning phrases one can eventually build a vocabulary that allows you to improvise and blues is all about this. So I’m trying to develop my Fingerstyle blues vocabulary which I play on my nylon classical.
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Cracking the code has indeed helped me advancing in my journey as Classical Guitar player.
I was studying in a conservatory and all with an awesome professor, but due to political problems I couldn’t end my formation there.
Now, there are some interesting points worth mentioning, when it comes to classical guitar I do talk a lot about string crossing. There are two “main categories”:
*Positive string crossing
- Negative string crossing
For example, using “middle” to play the 1st string (E) and then “index” to play the 2nd string (B) feels quite natural, sot that is positive string crossing.
Now, using “index” to play the 1st string E and “middle” to play the 2nd string (B) is not as natural, so we call it negative string crossing—it feels rather awkward.
Most professors recommend mastering both. Me personally, avoid using negative string crossings as much as possible.
And here is when you can get actually creative on the classical guitar, when stablishing your fingerings (as for right and left hand).
Classical guitar requires an incredible amount of creativity for solving technical difficulties:
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Left-hand displacements from one position of the fretboard to another
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to slur or not to slur
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where to play one note
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guide finguers
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anticipating right hand fingers and even left hand fingers
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playing legato or staccato
And the list goes on and on.
By applying what I learnt here at CtC, I’ve become aware 1000x of string crossings and the efficiency of motion. I’ve also learnt to slow down videos and copy technical solutions.
But mostly I’ve learnt that we all are unique and even though in the classical guitar, we play many times the same music, everyone has got a different approach to it!