Fingernails. They're useful things. You can do all sorts of things with fingernails. Scratching is the obvious thing to come to mind. Clearing nasal and aural passages are a couple more.
Spot squeezing can also be aided very successfully with judicious use of a couple of fingernails operating in tandem. Sometimes, though, they just get in the way.
Generally, what you don't need on your guitar fretting hand are fingernails - or at least long fingernails that prevent you from carrying out that complicated chord shape or, in my case, Em. Sometimes, those long fingernails just get in the way and have to be shown who is the paternal figure and cut down to size, their length and their potential for impediment curtailed. Often, I think, fingernails on my fretting hand can never be too short.
And that is all well and good.
But... what about the non-fretting hand? What about that set of fingernails?
This is something that I have been considering this morning - the fingernails on my non-fretting hand. I have never considered the idea that I really use them to any great degree in my playing. I lack the dexterity to engage in hot finger picking (nasal and aural passages naturally excepted) where, no doubt, lengthy
fingernails would come in handy (cough), and I do not have the well-executed
claw-hammer technique of my good friend, Simonitov where, again, no doubt, some length of nail would be useful.
In short, I am a strummer. A tongue between the teeth, hope I'm in time, strummer. And I have never considered the length of the fingernails on my strumming hand to be of any great import. If I had thought about that naily concept, I would probably have thought that it wouldn't matter how long or short they were, and that they would have no effect on whatever passes for my strumming technique. Actually, when I think about it, I have never really considered that I had a strumming technique anyway - technique is for proper guitar players. Therefore, upon any considered reflection of this subject, I would probably have been forced to say that, once again, (my) fingernails could never be too short.
However, it seems I was wrong.
The fingernails on my strumming hand are always fairly long; and for no other reason than they just are. My thumbnails (on both hands) are always particularly long - pervily so, some have said. I'm not quite sure why they would be pervily so but the world is all about opinions, isn't it. And stuff.
Anyway...
During the course of a recent, very tense televisual experience, I gnawed the fingernails (pervy thumbnails included) of both hands down to the quick and now I have discovered that as far as my strumming hand is concerned, fingernails can be too short.
I feel pain.
My gnawed fretting hand is fine; it is as pain-free a zone as it always is. But, my strumming hand...
Well, I have just discovered, as my strumming hand has just discovered, that, actually, after all, my fingernails are a fairly important part of my strumming technique (if technique really is a word that can actually be applied to my ham-fisted strumming) And, quite frankly, that has come as a bit of a surprise to me as I'd never considered that those fingernails played any major part; they were just... there.
And, as my fingertips complain bitterly on the down strokes, and reiterate their
grievances on the up strokes, I have been forced to conclude that I was in fact
entirely incorrect about the whole fingernail business. Oh the humanity Oh the
pain!
I suppose that there is an upside to my painful discovery though. And that is that it seems as if I have some kind of musical playing technique after all. It's not necessarily a good one but it is one nevertheless.
And I've waited years for one of those so it's quite a revelation. I wonder if they are like buses?
Or cheese?
Hmm...
Whatever the case - I want my nails back.
:-)
Steve B
Spot squeezing can also be aided very successfully with judicious use of a couple of fingernails operating in tandem. Sometimes, though, they just get in the way.
Generally, what you don't need on your guitar fretting hand are fingernails - or at least long fingernails that prevent you from carrying out that complicated chord shape or, in my case, Em. Sometimes, those long fingernails just get in the way and have to be shown who is the paternal figure and cut down to size, their length and their potential for impediment curtailed. Often, I think, fingernails on my fretting hand can never be too short.
And that is all well and good.
But... what about the non-fretting hand? What about that set of fingernails?
This is something that I have been considering this morning - the fingernails on my non-fretting hand. I have never considered the idea that I really use them to any great degree in my playing. I lack the dexterity to engage in hot finger picking (nasal and aural passages naturally excepted) where, no doubt, lengthy
fingernails would come in handy (cough), and I do not have the well-executed
claw-hammer technique of my good friend, Simonitov where, again, no doubt, some length of nail would be useful.
In short, I am a strummer. A tongue between the teeth, hope I'm in time, strummer. And I have never considered the length of the fingernails on my strumming hand to be of any great import. If I had thought about that naily concept, I would probably have thought that it wouldn't matter how long or short they were, and that they would have no effect on whatever passes for my strumming technique. Actually, when I think about it, I have never really considered that I had a strumming technique anyway - technique is for proper guitar players. Therefore, upon any considered reflection of this subject, I would probably have been forced to say that, once again, (my) fingernails could never be too short.
However, it seems I was wrong.
The fingernails on my strumming hand are always fairly long; and for no other reason than they just are. My thumbnails (on both hands) are always particularly long - pervily so, some have said. I'm not quite sure why they would be pervily so but the world is all about opinions, isn't it. And stuff.
Anyway...
During the course of a recent, very tense televisual experience, I gnawed the fingernails (pervy thumbnails included) of both hands down to the quick and now I have discovered that as far as my strumming hand is concerned, fingernails can be too short.
I feel pain.
My gnawed fretting hand is fine; it is as pain-free a zone as it always is. But, my strumming hand...
Well, I have just discovered, as my strumming hand has just discovered, that, actually, after all, my fingernails are a fairly important part of my strumming technique (if technique really is a word that can actually be applied to my ham-fisted strumming) And, quite frankly, that has come as a bit of a surprise to me as I'd never considered that those fingernails played any major part; they were just... there.
And, as my fingertips complain bitterly on the down strokes, and reiterate their
grievances on the up strokes, I have been forced to conclude that I was in fact
entirely incorrect about the whole fingernail business. Oh the humanity Oh the
pain!
I suppose that there is an upside to my painful discovery though. And that is that it seems as if I have some kind of musical playing technique after all. It's not necessarily a good one but it is one nevertheless.
And I've waited years for one of those so it's quite a revelation. I wonder if they are like buses?
Or cheese?
Hmm...
Whatever the case - I want my nails back.
:-)
Steve B