Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
|
|
|
Nananananaaaails
|
You are logged in as Guest
|
|
Users viewing this topic: none
|
|
Login  | |
|
   
Julian
Posts: 33
Joined: Sep. 22 2010
From: Aachen, very western Germany
|
 Nananananaaaails
|
|
|
Hi friends of good music,
so I made some experiences with my fingernails that I want to share...
Today I started another attempt to reinforce my nails, it must be the twentieth or so...
It all began when I started to play guitar, exactly one year and four months ago, after playing violin for >15 years (no nails needed for that thing...). After a life of nail-biting I had to grow my nails to get a somewhat passable sound. Man, that was hard. However everything went well until I fell in love with flamenco (one year ago) and I began to take lessons (10 months ago). I learned my first rasgueo, good thumb-technique, and my nails got shorter from lesson to lesson. With some nail-hardener as protection coat everything worked fine for some months. Then my technique got better, I played harder, my nails got thinner and thinner (from rasgueo-training) and finally split at the thinnest point: ouch!
So, I asked my teacher, who plays with fake-nails. We talked a bit and eventually I ended up having the same crap on my nails.
Ok - at first everything was great, I could push really hard - making sounds I never dreamed of (my poor Burguet must have thought I was fighting her....).
Then christmas came, my mother and my girlfriend convinced me to "just get them down for the holidays...". Well that turned out to be a good idea for my nails, but not that good for flamenco...
The nails got soooo unbelievable thin, almost like paper, as the upper layer came off with the fake-nails, leaving a destructed battlefield behind.
Ok, I then started to take food supplement (pantovigar, which is quite expensive) and a special nail-balsam from the local pharmacy. After some months my nails were pretty strong again, but at that point the "rasgueo-splitting-problem" came back...
So I used super-glue, which worked amazingly well... ... for one to maximum two days, until it began to tear off.
Ok so today was the day: I went to the local beauty-saloon and got some acrylics assembled. They are strong, you barely can see them and they feel great!
I started playing, which was really great: no worries about the nails. I could play really really hard.
After some hours I noticed that they got loose at the sides, so I went back to the nail-studio. The lady told me that this was totally uncommon and she hasn't seen this in her career (which must bee pretty long... ;-) ). She took the loose stuff off and filled the gabs with new acrylic (after cleaning everything thoroughly). I decided to not play for today to let the nails harden completely. 2 hours ago they came off anyways... with the upper layer of my nail. 
Ok, the back part of my nail (that built up after I started to take the supplements) was not really damaged  , but the front is wasted, again...
I really don't know what to do anymore.
Without protection my nails wear off too fast, and protection (nail-hardener, super-glue) just holds up for one or two days. Fake, acrylic etc. doesn't stick.
What can you guys recommend? Wait? Let the nails cure?
Short nails aren't wearing so fast, picado works well but arpeggio simply doesn't sound powerful enough.
Man, that sucks!
What about super-glue with acrylic-powder? At least super-glue doesn't seem to destroy my nails 
It's very frustrating and I think I just needed to tell anyone who understands this sh*t (my girlfriend is eye-rolling all the time, since I spend more time on my nails then she is on her's) 
I wish you all a pleasant weekend with lots of time for flamenco!
Olé!
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 24 2011 21:08:38
 |
|
Lascaux
Posts: 5
Joined: Sep. 30 2010
|
 RE: Nananananaaaails (in reply to Julian)
|
|
|
Two layers of fibreglass, one layer of silk!
Find yourself a good nail technician and get silk wrap. Built up in layers with resin, then filed and buffed, they take a good two weeks before starting to lift. And a good nail tech will know how to properly apply them so they don't lift.
Take caution: Once you've used wrap you won't be able to use your natural nails to play guitar for a good 6 months or so till they grow back... the silk wrap makes natural nails as thin as tissue paper at least until they grow through.
But that being said, I can play flamenco for a good two weeks for 5+ hours a day and they'll hold out before I get them replaced.
As for tone, I played classical with natural nails for years, the first day I had wraps on I noticed a very slight negative alteration to the sound as your nail comes in contact with the string. I have got used to it now and overall see tone has improved in both flamenco and classical playing as it is so much more consistent with the wraps, and you can play for far longer before the nail shape wears down and you loose the perfect nail shape you spent ages getting right!
I have strong natural nails that never bothered me once in my classical playing but they just can't stand up to flamenco. No supplements or coatings made any difference, flamenco nails have to be built like tanks.
I honestly think those lucky few guitarists that can play as much flamenco for as long as they want with natural nails... they're less than 1% of us. My honest opinion, if you have nails that aren't freakishly thick and strong to start off with, no amount of supplements or nail coatings is ever going to get on top of it, if you're serious about flamenco, you have to use the wrap!
Silk wrap is a god send with a good nail technician!
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 25 2011 0:40:18
|
|
Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
|
|
RE: Nananananaaaails (in reply to Julian)
|
|
|
Hi Julian,
( Can it be that I know your avatar from GS? It would mean good memories.)
Here is what I think about nail treatment, without certainty of it being all correct.
Nails are made of creatin. With hair, horns, hooves, skin armings and feathers consisting of it, one of the significant inventions of evolution.
Unusually thin nails should be because of lack of biotin ( vitamin H or B7 / B8 ).
Here is what I gathered once, when a girl-friend asked me to make a quick research on biotin:
Daily dosis: 0,03 - 0,1 mg
Symptoms of lack:
Skin irritations, hair loss, brittle nails, anemia, depression, tiredness, faint, anorexia, raised general chlosterine level, low bloodsugar, tongue inflammation.
Symptoms of affluence:
Delayed or decreased insulin distribution, encreased demand of vitamine C + B6, encreased level of bloodsugar.
Most supply would be with calf liver, salmon, peanuts, cauliflower, raw oats, yolk and rice.
However, unless with overconsumption of raw egg, with pregnancy and nursing ( + 0,005 mg adviced ) or with genetical preference ( +0,05 - 15 mg ), lack of biotin won´t commonly occure.
Lack through diet being practically non-existent.
-
Once stuffed with pretty thick ones, my nails have become quite thin too since almost twenty years.
Maybe I must be rasping much less rasgeuados than other fellas, still there gathers quite some nail dust on tops section under the strings, and my way of plucking tends to be rather forte too.
But there seems no problem with the nails despite daily practising ( mostly for hours ).
Could be the nail issue to be similar like the one with car shells.
Constructors used to go for stiffening / arming race cars, until it showed that deforming was the way to go. ( Laotse must have said something to the extent of: "The gras blade won´t break as it flexes" or so. :0D )
I think to have read here on the foro from players who returned from all the hardening measures from tinctures and laqueres and sheets back to plain, only to find that things were much better without applications.
They found that used chemicals had thinned out, brittle ( and slow down in growth / diameter ) and that their natural / deflecting nails would wear off less than nails with rigid layers on top. Rediscovering the advantage of felxible nails, some even mentioned how they like to wetten their hands / steep fingertips before practising.
Women will also confirm that laquered nails over time suffer from being suspended from air.
Another note is the hearsaying that nail as an reaction will grow encreasingly at rasped spots. From there moderate measures of rasgeuados could even be beneficial to nail growth.
-
Supplements logically might work either not at all or only very little; seing how normal diet already supplies more than enough of biotin.
With enhancement of nail growth intented the solution should not be lying in symptomatic treatment, but in analyzing the individual, metabolistic background of biotin absorption and going from there.
Ruphus
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 25 2011 13:46:15
|
|
avimuno
Posts: 598
Joined: Feb. 9 2007
From: Paris, France
|
|
RE: Nananananaaaails (in reply to Julian)
|
|
|
I would tend to agree with the people suggesting a diet with more vitamins and calcium.
Every person's body is different of course, and what works for some might not work for others, but it can only help to try to naturally strengthen your nails. I have personally gone through pretty much every trick in the book when it comes to strengthening my nails, and I have found that each one of them has always caused some damage to my nails in the long run. As such, I have stopped using any strengthener for about 4-5 years now (except very very occasionally, when I really need to).
I eat more vitamins and calcium, and those have actually done the trick for me... I now have naturally stronger and healthier nails, which never break (I have not broken a nail in more than 3 years - and it was for another reason than playing guitar). The downside is that using some sort of nail strengthener will allow you to have a stronger attack with the right hand, hence more volume - which helps in the dance studio. The upside is that not using anything anymore has made me work on my attack, which has become lighter and which also allows me to keep my nails really short... so much so that people do not notice that I have longer nails on one hand now - which has really helped my sex-life too! 
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 13 2017 8:57:22
|
|
 New Messages |
 No New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
 Locked w/ New Messages |
 Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET |
0.109375 secs.
|
Printable Version
