Rob MacKillop

My approach to nail-less playing

If you play the classical guitar with nails, or even a combination of nail and flesh, and suddenly break a
nail, you might notice that the sound of the finger which is now just flesh can sound pretty awful
compared to the sound you make with your other fingers. You could therefore be forgiven for coming
to the conclusion that nail-less playing is the last thing you would want to do.
The main reason that particular nail-less finger sounds so bad is that you are still trying to play with
the technique you learned for nail playing. The nail-less finger is at a disadvantage.
Some players are attracted by the idea of playing without nails, and in a moment of either trepidation or
elation, cut their nails off. The sound they now make is not what they had hoped for, but they feel they
will give it a few weeks to see if things will improve. Very often it doesnt.
The fact is that nail-less playing demands a different technique to the one you learned before. The
good news is that it is not a difficult technique, and once acquired you will have a strong-sounding
technique, with a consistently good tone. No more worrying about the health and well-being of your
nails
Two Myths Debunked
Calluses: there is a myth that you must build up callouses on your fingers in order to replicate the
toughness of your dearly-departed nail. THIS IS NOT TRUE. My fingertips are soft and smooth, and I
use hand cream on a regular basis to help keep them that way. A rough fingertip will give a rough
sound, a smooth fingertip, a smooth sound.
Another myth is that there is one way to play with the flesh technique. Just as with nail playing, there
are many ways to play the guitar without nails. I have found my way but there are other ways. For the
sake of brevity, I will refer to only two approaches: the Trrega/Pujol method, and one born of the
resurgence in Historically Informed Performance (HIP) , which grew out of the Early-Music
movement.
The Trrega/Pujol Method
See Pujols Escuela Razonada, 1934. I have the beautifully-produced English translation of the first
three (of the original four) volumes, produced by Editions Orphee. Pujol claims the method is Based
on the Principles of Francisco Trrega.
In Chapter XI, Pujol tries to be objective in his description of the two ways of plucking a string with
a nail or without but his choice of adjectives belies his preference for the flesh alone:
Since the fingernail is hard, and varied in its surface, thickness and consistency, it imparts to the
string a penetrating brilliance, quick and rather metallic. Without the nails, however, the string is struck
by a smooth, subtle and sensitive object, both thicker and wider than the nail, and which gives a sound
of greater softness, fullness and purity.
His concern is that the nail brings out less of the fundamental, and more of the upper partials, while the
flesh gives a more pure fundamental sound:
Hence the empty and metallic feeling of the sound produced with the nail is inimical to the
fundamental sound and favourable to the secondary sounds, as opposed to the full and pure sound
produced with the flesh of the finger, which is totally favourable to the fundamental sound and not to
the secondary ones.
However, he does not deny that what it (the fingernail) lacks in sweetness, fullness and balance, it
gains in brilliance, strength and contrast - Sor and Trrega, with the spirituality proper to them as
classic composers, drew from the strings the quintessence of sound, in the service of pure music, and,
made the sound of the instruments more noble.
Pujol assesses the Advantages and disadvantages of each procedure. His makes a positive
argument FOR using nails, in that a minimum of effort is required to get a sound with clarity, and the
left hand does not need to press so hard on the fretboard. . Yet, he remained a flesh player throughout
his career, believing that sound came first.
The technique Pujol and Trrega employed was, of course, heavily based on the rest stroke, or
apoyando, striking the string at right angles, and producing as full a sound as possible

The HIP-Related Method

... has grown out of the Early-Music movement, active for the last fifty years or more.
Lute players in the 1970s and 80s adopted the thumb-in technique, witnessed on many period
illustrations; after playing a note, the thumb moved inside the palm, rather than outside (as with
modern guitar technique). Slowly it became apparent that it was only really suitable for the 16 th C. lute
repertoire. During Dowlands lifetime, with the increase in bass lines, the thumb started moving outside
the hand, into a more recognisable position for todays players. However, in both cases the little finger
was positioned on the soundboard.
The position of the pinkie varied a lot. Some illustrations show the contact being the outer edge , so
lying quite flat. Others show the tip of the pinkie making contact. Sometimes it was placed between
rose and bridge, or on the bridge, sometimes behind it. Each posture and position would radically alter
the sound being produced.
The thumb mostly played rest strokes, the fingers free strokes. The ring finger was used rarely,
Moving into the 19th century, and the guitar, some of this lute technique can still be traced. Sor
admonished players for placing the pinkie on the table, though at the time he was pushing his friend,
Aguados tripod, which held the guitar in a fixed position.
Some rest the little finger of the right hand on the soundboard so as to give sureness to the hand
when plucking. This may have been useful while the guitar was not in a fixed position, but now that it
is played on a tripod I do not consider the support necessary. However, he does admit: Sometimes I
employ the little finger, pressing it perpendicularly on the soundboard, ... but take care to raise it as
soon as it ceases to be necessary.
There is no one single 19th C. guitar technique. Even national styles are difficult to agree upon
compare Sors and Aguados methods, which could hardly be more different. Pujol, in his Escuela,
contemplated that Sor could possibly represent a Catalan school.
So one must make decisions: nails or no nails, pinkie down or not, mostly slurs in scale runs (Sor) or
articulation of each note unless notated otherwise (Aguado), and more. These are important
considerations, the adoption of which can radically change the sound of the music.
Many players of 19th-century guitars today come from a lute background, I spent some twenty years
as a lute player before really getting into the guitar again. I started by concentrating on Fernando Sor,
whos technique is closest to that of the baroque lutenist.
My Technique
I tried to resist the music of Trrega, as his technique is so alien to me, the twist of the wrist, the
apoyando, the common use of the ring finger I find such techniques too difficult to adopt after twenty
years of lute playing. But Trregas music is among my favourite, Llobets too. I decided to make some
videos using the technique I had developed over the years, using gut or nylgut strings, and comments I
was getting from many guitarists have encouraged me to continue playing this beautiful music.
So, my technique today incorporates some late lute technique, some Sor-related technique, and I have
started bringing Trrega-style rest strokes in slower pieces, though without adopting his twisted wrist.
My pinkie often touches the soundboard, yet often does not, especially as I am using the ring finger
more. Careful observation of my playing will note that the pinkie is up and down a lot during a single
piece. When it does touch the soundboard, the touch is VERY light it is not planted, but brushes
against it. To do this successfully, the pinkie side of my hand is lowered somewhat, and I can view
inside my palm.
My thumb plays a high proportion of rest strokes, which gives a warm sound, and it frequently plays as
high as the second string, and sometimes the first. I often use thumb-index alternation in scale
passages, sometime thumb-index-middle, and I can play much faster this way than by alternating index
and middle.
I confess my tremolo is quiet. Id be vastly over-praising myself by quoting Pujol: the tremolo is no
longer metallic and brilliant, but acquires an ethereal sonority. The sad fact is that my tremolo
needs work, but it was never a strength of mine even before I cut my nails off and went over to the dark
side! This is a Work In Progress