Jacquesg4j wrote
Talking about using nails and fingers... My stumming hand's index-finger-nail is very very thin compared to my other hand! I can actually see lines from the strings on my nail... And I use a pick 75% of the time... How does your nails look if you use fingers and all their natural accessories?
Well of course your right hand nail has marks on it from the strings: The left hand doesn't do much strumming or picking does it?
The nail that takes a beating on my right hand is the middle finger. That gets a little notch worn in it after a while. I just have to file them all down - the middle until the notch is gone, the others the same amount as I filed the middle. My right index finger is permanently crooked (the legacy of a child hood soccer injury), so the outside corner of that nail tends to engage with the string. Maybe if that finger was properly straight I'd get a notch in that one too.
Of course I'm a complete animal, playing steel string acoustic with 13s. The 11s on my electric feel like not much more than nothing to me, and I'm sure they're taking less out of my fingernails.
With the wound strings the heavier gauges must me a coarser "file" than the lighter gauges, so I'd expect heavier strings to take more out of the nails.
There's all kinds of ways to address this, none of them "right" other than in the sense that they work best for a given player. I noticed recently that Lyle Lovett has not just a thumb pick but also picks that fit on the right hand fingers - metal picks something like a dobro player might use, but shorter. Martin Simpson has overlays and a thumb pick. Richard Thompson plays hybrid but keeps the nails on his right hand very short and they don't engage the strings (he's playing with flesh on strings). I try to keep my nails fairly short so that there's just a LITTLE bit of nail on the string (this is a cat looking at a king I suppose, me including myself in this list of more eminent examples). I find I don't like the feel if they get too long and in fact they impede me a little.
A pick is not necessary. Mark Knopfler and Jeff Beck both do quite nicely without. That said, I think there may be some things that you can do ONLY with fingers or ONLY with a pick or ONLY playing hybrid (Richard Thompson goes to thumb pick and 3 fingers for one or two songs). There's no right or wrong, if it works for you then it works, but it's interesting to hear about and consider what other people use.
