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z6 -> RE: picado question (Nov. 27 2013 15:23:13)
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I used to use vaseline when I performed classical guitar but with flamenco it feels nice without it. But I never have to perform.
The best of it is that it offers consistency. In front of an audience that helped me. John Williams rubs his fingers on his nose to get them oily (yuk John, go buy some vaseline). But nose juice is even better than vaseline if you have a good supply.
Digging very deep feels great but it has taken me a long time to get there.
Those black flamenco strings are so slippery. I love them.
By the way, the only way I can get the right sound is by not making that 'perfect' contact. That is, by grabbing deep. But it still feels light. And it trends nicely from the 'bip'. (Indeed it is none other than the bip itself - I don't do it to perfect something else.) It seems to get more powerful with the least effort. Picado is a magical technique.
I hope I can say this without sounding nasty. Del Monte is a much finer player than me. No question. But it sounds like the best effort I ever heard from a classical player. But you guys say Grisha does the same and his picado is astonishingly powerful.
Is a kind of 'aqua-planeing' going on? I am currently not trying to increase my 'top speed' which seems variable. I'm enjoying this 'perpetual motion' you guys introduced me to.
For a long time the end joint of my i finger bent back, but it now seems relaxed but stiff (stiff in a good way as it's painless but strangely relaxed. It's as if I can no longer get in my own way.)
But, for sure, the sound and feel is saying dig. It should be harder to do. But it's easier.
(I have worked on picado very very seriously, and for many hours. It's like the technique emerges if I don't push. But I had to push to get there, it would appear. It's only 117bpm. But I no longer feel like trying for speed. Because when I do it with a deep attack either from above or straight through, it sounds faster. Really. There is a huge difference. I still do double- takes when I first do it.)
It feels, to me, that unless I can do it from a 'standing start' then it's not flamenco/fakemenco... It is a technique, a 'feel' after all. (I am talking about playing warm, by the way. Standing start meaning not working continuously up to speed but going slow and doubling the speed. It seems to put my fingertips where they need to be (no twisting, the same angle for everything).
Nail shape was the enabler. And no, I will never tire of thanking Ricardo for that. And the same deep insight from others. (And I do understand that there are plenty of people who have okay nails, shape, whatever, but I was never able to master picado or arpeggios before I got the right shape in order to allow all the other tools break free. Arpeggios have the same feel, now, to me; a continuous reflex.
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