quote:

ORIGINAL: callemunicion

Hello!
There are not many resources on that topic but I find it very important, especially for me. When do you exactly relax your finger and let it fall in it's position while playing an arpegio?
Talking about relaxation I can imagine two ways of executing an arpegio:
1.play relax play relax etc. immediately after one finger has played, the finger relaxes and falls into it's place. Adam del Monte does that, when he plays very slow. you can see it clearly at 2:43

I've never seen any flamenco guitarist talking about that, but some classical guitarist do, but I don't know if it's desireable what some of them suggest:
2.Thinking of the fingers as a unit:
when playing PIMA (or PAMI) it'd like that: P then IMA (I stays in the palm, then M follows then A follows (so you have all three fingers near the palm as if they are holding something) and after A or P has played, all three fingers relax and come back to their position to strike again.
Which way do you think is better and why?

quote:

ORIGINAL: kitarist



There is no reason to keep tensing your flexors after the string is released from your finger - this would only contribute to a feeling of increased tension especially at higher speeds.

So from that, the second approach would be wrong as it requires flexing fingers for longer than necessary.

The first approach would be correct but realize that it is not a play i relax i play m relax m sequence at higher speeds. The relaxing of i does not have to be completed before m flexes because different fingers and muscles are involved - it just happens that way at slow speeds like in the video.

At higher speed, the relaxing of the finger that just played happens during the flexing of the next playing finger - basically the relaxing has to happen as soon as the string is released by the finger, and the time window for it is between that moment and a bit before the the time the finger has to play again.