Picking Choices for Fingerstyle Guitar

When it comes to playing fingerstyle guitar, there are a few choices in how we can pick the guitar:

1. FLESH: Playing with the flesh of your fingertips. This means you don’t have any fingernail extending beyond the tip of your fingers.

   Advantages: Easy Care, No broken nails to worry about.

   Disadvantages: not much attack on the strings, resulting in low volume and an overly “soft” sound in your playing. Less dynamic control of the sound and therefore much harder to control musical expression on the guitar.

2. 2)  FINGERPICKS: Playing with fingerpicks. This usually means you have purchased a set of three metal or plastic fingerpicks and a metal or plastic thumbpick.

   Advantages: Hard attack and bright tone, strong volume. No nail care and no broken nails to worry about.

   Disadvantages: Fingerpicks take some getting used to, as an “unnatural” extension of your fingers. Fingerpicks may loosen or move around, causing an inconsistent playing experience. Cannot downstroke with the back of the fingers, as the fingerpicks will snag on the strings. Cannot execute a proper “rest stroke”.

3. 3)  FINGERNAILS: Playing with natural fingernails. This means you grow your fingernails out a bit on index, middle and ring fingers of your picking-hand, and take care to maintain them at a reasonable length. The thumb may or may not have a nail, which can be engaged on the lower strings or not. Some players use a thumbpick in addition to their natural fingernails in order to get the bass note tone they prefer. Others use primarily the flesh of their thumb and then may switch to their thumbnail for the occasional brighter bass tone.

   Advantages: Natural “feel” and staying in touch with the strings. Can downstroke with the back of the nails as well as upstroke. Can execute a proper “rest stroke” (very important for classical guitar style). Can still play with a regular flatpick as well, including “hybrid” picking style in which you use the pick and the middle and ring fingers to pick other strings.

   Disadvantages: Must periodically use a nail file to care for and shape the nails (although this could be an advantage, since you are likely, in the same sitting, to take care of your other fingernails as well. This is just good hygiene!). Nails may break, especially if too long. This is less likely on a nylon-string guitar than on a steel-string guitar. Some players (such as James Taylor) use artificial nails to substitute or reinforce their natural nails.

Of the three options mentioned above, I use and recommend #3, natural fingernails with no thumbpick. This is partly due to having been trained in classical guitar, however it should be noted that I currently play almost exclusively on a steel string acoustic, switching between fingerstyle and flatpick style depending on the song. I have had very little trouble with broken nails. The key is to keep them fairly short. A good check of fingernail length is this: hold up your picking hand with palm facing toward you and fingers straight. Hold your hand up to a window or light to see this more clearly, but you should see a “crescent moon” of fingernail just over the tip of the flesh of your finger:

This should provide enough fingernail to engage the string, but still be short enough to remain strong. Notice that the curve of the fingernail matches the curve of the fingertip. Finally, the other reason I recommend natural fingernails, especially as you are starting out, is that it costs nothing to grow a little fingernail on 3 fingers.

And by the way, looking at the other hand for a moment: Keep your fretting-hand fingernails trimmed short so that they do not prevent you from pressing down on the strings.

Good luck and have fun trying out your fingerpicking!

About the Author

Craig Tuttle is a professional guitar teacher in Monroe, Wisconsin, USA. He has many years of experience playing and teaching various styles of guitar to students of all ages. Click the link for more info on guitar lessons in Monroe, WI with Craig!