nail/flesh contact

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nail/flesh contact

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12850bd

Posts: 148
Joined: Nov. 9 2006
From: australia

nail/flesh contact

All the time i have played guitar I have used short nails and planted deep to obtain a nail flesh tone. However the other day i read a post by someone talking about Antonio Rey's fantastic tone on the guitar. They had been to his workshop and this is the quote
" Just as a side remark - a bit off topic: I recently took part in a flamenco workshop given by Antonio Rey and Mahmoud Turkmani. When Rey explained how his picado works he showed us his nails and they were surprisingly short (far from the monster nails so many flamenco players prod themselves of) and he explained that he uses no flesh contact at all - pure nail. His picado is very full and substantial, nothing you would expect from nail only playing."

Do you think Antonio meant this literally? ....

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 4 2019 6:57:24

Ricardo

Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: nail/flesh contact (in reply to 12850bd)

quote:

ORIGINAL: 12850bd

All the time i have played guitar I have used short nails and planted deep to obtain a nail flesh tone. However the other day i read a post by someone talking about Antonio Rey's fantastic tone on the guitar. They had been to his workshop and this is the quote
" Just as a side remark - a bit off topic: I recently took part in a flamenco workshop given by Antonio Rey and Mahmoud Turkmani. When Rey explained how his picado works he showed us his nails and they were surprisingly short (far from the monster nails so many flamenco players prod themselves of) and he explained that he uses no flesh contact at all - pure nail. His picado is very full and substantial, nothing you would expect from nail only playing."

Do you think Antonio meant this literally? ....

Of course not.

The thing is there is a pocket where the string is gripped perfectly between nail and finger tip.... it’s the challenge to land that every time especially tremolo or fast arps, picado is easier. Most of us hit the skin too high up and the sliding toward the pocket results in a bunching up of the flesh and skimming the nail for a thinner sound than right in the pocket. It’s for this reason, most players including Paco de Lucía, use petroleum product or Vaseline on the tips, refreshing it by globing some on the heel of the neck. It’s a trick that helps but I found it collects dirt on the bass strings and too quickly kills them.

I assume Antonio refers to playing from that pocket vs catching the string first with flesh and sliding into the pocket.

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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 4 2019 10:33:41

kitarist

Posts: 1715
Joined: Dec. 4 2012

RE: nail/flesh contact (in reply to Ricardo)

Also, playing nail-only and no flesh would result in a very audible clicking sound every time a still-vibrating string is touched in order to play it again - so if you don't hear anything like that from Antonio Rey, you can be sure he is not in fact using a nail-only contact.

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Konstantin

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 4 2019 17:21:15