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Has anyone developed THE optimal way of string crossing? Considering different finger length, I believe there must be only one way. One for im and one for mi picado during increasing and decreasing scale runs. Those who developed fast picado, share your string crossing technique.
If by “string crossing” you mean moving striking-hand fingers to a string that hasn’t been played yet, and if by “increasing and decreasing” you mean ascending and descending, there’s no trick or single way to do it, in my opinion. Once you’ve developed picado and are comfortable with it, the only real difficulty is having to move to a lower-pitched string with your middle finger, and the only effective way to overcome that difficulty is to get used to it.
Most of the time, you can avoid the problem by starting with index or middle in order to have your index available to play the “new” lower-pitched string, but some melodic lines will force you to use the awkward fingering, so it’s best to just get used to it. If you spend some time playing Exercise 8 starting m-i, it will eventually become just as easy as it is starting i-m. Of course, tomorrow it’ll be just as hard as before, but you’ll probably warm up to the idea a little more quickly. Three steps forward, two steps back.
I mentioned way back when, probably to one of your inquiries, that I applied the Paul Gilbert picking patterns to achieve a similar fluidity between i and m as flat picking up vs down strokes. In otherwords, the left hand becomes important. There are many caveats and exceptions, but it was a general thing that helped me mainly with improvising, where you don’t have the luxury of drilling long phrases like falsetas. I worked out many of these in Paco’s guajiras tutorial (paco falseta tutorial 6) on YouTube. What works for me might not be for everybody, and Paco himself has what I consider “inefficient” crossings that he deliberately drilled (such as Zyryab ending, leading with m finger instead of i).
Plus this last year I had two big revelations. 1. Going back to and religiously practicing a couple of Gerardo Nunez picado exercises that deal with string crossing, going back and forth and back again. 2. Nail shape. Specifically the results from that thread I started. and Ricardo's nail advice. (Actually only had to religiously practice those exercises daily for about 2 weeks before the breakthrough)
Reshaping my nails seems to have unlocked the never level of technique progression for me. Particularly with picado and the string crossing issues I've always had send to have gone away. Or at least the ones that remain I know are conquerable. (Wish I'd started that thread 5 years earlier)
I only play a few scales but of the few I play one is Norman's ex. no.8 due to the string crossings. I play it starting with both m and i, I also play it, at times, with ami. After playing it thousands of times it seems to have worked for me (for the most part). Cheers to Norman
2. Nail shape. Specifically the results from that thread I started. and Ricardo's nail advice. (Actually only had to religiously practice those exercises daily for about 2 weeks before the breakthrough)
Don't forget to mention nail surface. I have tried different nail shape for my m finger. Unlike Mr. Marlow I attack strings at an angle. My m finger nail has a slight ramp going up away from the thumb. So does my index finger.
quote:
I only play a few scales but of the few I play one is Norman's ex. no.8 due to the string crossings.
These days I'm developing a middle finger centered approach for string crossing. These picado exercises came at the right time.
Well it's obvious no? If you only practice with the right You'd only get the benefit for the right hand. But you'd lose any benefit of the coordination with the left.
There was a string crossing exercise I practiced for a while attributed to paco that was like this. Just right hand
Eventually, unfortunately, to make music, I think you may have to add some left hand fingerings.
In case it’s not obvious, I’ll point out that there are three right-hand configurations repeated throughout the exercise. You can see them in the first measure on beats 1, 2 and 3 (same configuration on beats 1 and 4). The configurations are repeated thereafter on pairs of adjacent strings, but, because of the standard tuning, the melody is spread across three strings between beat 4 of the second measure and beat 1 of the third measure.
That's the exact moment when I have to move my hand to the next higher position. Then it's not awkward anymore. Works for me.
Not when you still have notes to do on the higher pitch string, starting with index. When you are running a descending scale this is a non-issue.
Here is a simple exercise between first and second string. Move around left hand shape in diatonic thirds, any scale you want, but do triplets between strings 1-2-1, 1-2-1, 1-2-1, etc. Then switch the pattern to 2-1-2, 2-1-2, etc. That forces you to address the issue which is that you need to be “ambidextrous” regarding string crossings with i and m fingers.
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