Playing with just a pick is obviously out of the question as it can only be at one place at a time. The only possibility then is hybrid picking (pick plus the rest of the fingers) - ToddK is the only one I know of who has been able to do this, but as Rico_Kiko pointed out he has abandoned this. Another issue is that a pick on nylon strings usually sounds terrible imo - only Todd managed to get a good sound, but he had to radically change his picking technique.
When you say you've seen a lot of performers using a pick, what you probably saw were commercial rumba performers such as Strunz and Farra etc. - very different to flamenco. this kind of playing maybe suits a pick as the players take turns in shredding out a solo.
El Kiko -> RE: flamenco with guitar pick (Jun. 19 2011 11:06:53)
Aloysius I was just looking at your very elegant website , its really very good.. Had a little listen to some samples too . Plaza de Pilatos ... very nice sound ( I shall have to steal a falseta one day [8D]) Obviously no pick involved with you ....
I've seen lots of guys use their "i" nail as a temporary guitar pick. It was popular to do this as a kind of "trick" with many younger players in Spain some 10 years ago. They would usually play some insanely fast little flourish as a kind of remate (a hilarious effect). It seems to have gone out of fashion as I haven't seen it for a while. Anyone else seen this?
Thanks for that Rico, I really need to spend some time updating that site, remove some of the older stuff that's a bit sloppy and add newer stuff that's a bit better ... my wife runs a dance school now so my web time always gets spent updating that site.
You stopped using your pick a couple of years ago now. Can you play all the material that you did before or has the hand still not had time to catch up?
Hi Erectile, Im not sure what your question really is? Can you play flamenco with a pick, or is traditional to play with a pick. Personally i do not use a pick. It is possible to play with a pick as Toddk has proven, but imo you are severly limiting the possibilities of technique. It is not traditional to play flamenco with pick. If you want to play strunz and farrah then its ok. If you want to play moraito then its not ok. Play with pick generally is not flamenco, Todd was the only one to play flamenco well with a pick that i have seen, and even he changed to traditional technique. So my gut feeling is forget the pick.
Wether or not it's flamenco depends on the type of pic used. [:D] enjoy
El Kiko -> RE: flamenco with guitar pick (Jul. 17 2011 10:56:05)
Thats a pigs hoof ( pezuña) that he had apparently just eaten prevoiusly. Cant be good for the strings , and I never seen anything about that in the encuentro book ..... I'm just going to the butchers , back soon .......
Harry -> RE: flamenco with guitar pick (Jul. 17 2011 11:52:18)
Flamenco to me is not just a sound, certain chord progressions and a rhythm, it is also a way of playing. Hybrid picking is rockabilly to me. Using a pick only without other fingers is your ticket to being a hack. But there is a lot of disagreement about everything on this site. I had suggested that flamenco with a pick makes me cringe and several people here defended it citing Todd specifically. I have a feeling though that when many members read the title of this thread, they are thinking fakemenco.
Todd proved long ago that what I used to call "chicken pickn" can totally work for flamenco. As a seasoned picker myself, and playing flamenco with fingers too, I felt that the difficulties involved in developing all the flamenco techniques that way are ridiculously hard, for the only small benefit of the fast single note runs (picados), and even then, some are not as awkward with fingers as with alternate picking.
About cringing, there was a video a few years back of a flamenco player that had lost his fingers!
