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RE: Picado with A and M fingers? (in reply to nikgogl)
MA picado isn't that unusual. Some players use it because it works better for them; others do it to avoid overuse of their index and middle fingers. IIRC there was a video of Gerardo performing MA picado and plucking intervals with his thumb and index finger.
Am I seeing things correctly? Is there any advantage to that technique? Not sure I’ve ever seen it before.
Your question really needs to be addressed because many flamenco guitarists play or show A M picado. But no one says why they use A M picado.
Oscar Herrero explains it in his Paso a Paso DVD Vol.3. He says that A finger is weaker than I and M or thumb. A is used frequently for all flamenco techniques and thus as important as thumb, I and M finger. To create more balanced strength in your fingers, he suggests including A M and A I picado or scale exercises in our practice.
If you practice such kind of picados/scales a lot, it becomes normal to play picado that way. It also gives you more options to play picado. For super fast picado you can use I M as usual. For normal speed picado, the other finger variations come into use.
It makes perfect sense. We guitarists need a perfectly balanced strength in our fingers. Avoiding injuries that come from an overuse of a certain finger is one of the advantages too.
RE: Picado with A and M fingers? (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
Oscar Herrero explains it in his Paso a Paso DVD Vol.3. He says that A finger is weaker than I and M or thumb. A is used frequently for all flamenco techniques and thus as important as thumb, I and M finger. To create more balanced strength in your fingers, he suggests including A M and A I picado or scale exercises in our practice.
he suggests PRACTISING with A and M to work on the A finger, but as I believe there is a physiological issue with the A and M fingers tendons sharing a sheath, it would not be possible to get AM picado up to the level of IM picado. What some players do use though, is IA picado, as these fingers are usually more similar length.