Perfect picking!

Any fingerstyle player knows how crucial it is to develop good technique in their picking hand. Once in full flow this hand relies almost exclusively on touch and feel. Unlike the fretting hand, which gets plenty of visual attention, the picking hand is rarely glanced at.

This feature focuses mainly on classical techniques with some basic flamenco elements thrown in. And although everything here can be translated to steel-string, I am addressing tone and touch in a way that’s more relevant to nylon strings so this should make a great companion article to my regular column on classical guitar arrangements.

“A COMMON MISTAKE IN FREE STROKE IS FOR THE FINGERS TO BE CLAW-LIKE AND PULL AT THE STRINGS”

The techniques will include ‘apoyando’ and ‘tirando’. Apoyando is the Spanish term for rest stroke; apoyar, meaning to rest or to lean, refers to the stroke of the finger or thumb pushing through the string and landing (resting/leaning) on an adjacent string. Tirando or ‘free stroke’, from tirar; to throw, is the term used when the finger plucks the string by curling it inside