Shaping your Nails: Going Natural or Making Your Own Fake Nails (Mar 28) Questions / Suggestions
It is tiiiime for... yet another hotly requested topic! We are really hitting those one by one this month - both through our guest streams and in-house tonebase instructors. So excited about these! Keep the suggestions coming, my friends!
This time, we are going to be talking all about nails: nail shape, nail length, natural versus fake nails, how to achieve the best sound, and - last but not least - I will perform a full demonstration of how I do my own nails!
This will include not only an explanation of how I do my regular, natural nails, but also how to create your own fake nails from a cheap and very widely available material!
Those of you who know me might already know what I am talking about: ping pong balls!
In this livestream, I will be demonstrating my take on the David Russell ping pong nail method, which I was fortunate enough to learn from him during my studies at Royal Academy of Music, where he was one of our visiting professors.
Find the start time in your time zone by clicking the photo or following this event link:
https://app.tonebase.co/guitar/live/player/shaping-your-nails
We are going to be using this thread to gather suggestions and questions!
- What questions do you have on this topic?
- Any particular area you would like us to focus on?
Fingernails: Most guitarists use them, but is there a method for shaping them that will guarantee a good sound? What tools should we use for natural nails? What can we do if they are weak, brittle or unusually shaped? Should we give fake nails a shot? All this and more will be covered in this livestream with tonebase instructor Mircea Gogoncea. This show will demonstrate a few methods for shaping both natural and fake nails, including a full live walkthrough for making our own fake nails from a cheap and widely available material: ping pong balls!
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Hi, Mircea.
I´ve been struggling with my fingernails for some time. I decided to cut them off for Christmas and let them grow from scratch. Last week I shaped them putting sandpaper on the strings. My problem is threefold:
- My m finger likes to make great noises whenever I prepare (plant) it.
- I can´t play with i/m/a on the lower strings with without the provervial scratchy sound.
- I can´t play regular steady tremolo (as I used to).
I know all the typical solutions. I´ve tried every sort of polish materials, shape, length and attack angle.
Any miracle for the Holy Week? THANK YOU!!
P.S. Please forget about the pinky. The nail is horrible, but I´ve not been using it lately. Also, feel free not to answer all of this. I don´t want to monoplolize your time, and maybe your lesson will clarify everything for me anyway.
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My nails are almost identical in shape and length as those on the photo, except for the "a" finger. My biggest problem is with the "m" finger (it is easy to burr the part that is in contact with the string.
I am interested in various types of nail conditioners and "enhancers". -
Mircea Here's the visor you asked about. This is the kind of stuff you need when you get old and your eyes begin to fail.
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Dean Wow, this is very cool - thank you Dean! I've never seen anything like this. I don't personally need one right now for my nails, but it's good to know that they exist, for the future (and possibly for other things that require even more precision than my nails!)
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One thing that is often overlooked is the differences in finger lengths. Most people have a longer m finger, which presents that finger to the string at a different angle than the i and a fingers. For me, if I'm keeping the large knuckle (MCP joint) over the string with a slightly arched wrist, my m finger is at around a 115-130 deg to the plane of the strings/top and my i and a fingers are about 90-100 deg. It took me way too long to learn that this meant my m finger could function better with a shorter nail. I like to keep my tip joints (DIP joint) firm, but I have noticed that some players will compensate for this difference in length by letting that joint collapse a little bit and that then equalizes the three finger angles. Many are unaware they are doing this, but I've watched several videos that prove to me they do it for free strokes. See the video I attached.
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Dean Very good point - thank you for your comment and photo, Dean! I don't personally use fingernail length to make up for the difference in finger length, opting to use the angle of my wrist for that instead. However, I have seen people use this successfully, including Judicael, with his absolutely glorious thumb nail that I've seen be several centimeters long at times!
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Mircea That's a good point, I forgot that Judicael is another guitarist who doesn't follow the Pumping Nylon advice for a straight-line sloped nail shape. His nails are rounded and very long. I think the reason some players use a really long thumbnail is because they've chosen a low wrist and when you play that way it's difficult to make contact with the nail unless it's very long. Jason Vieaux uses a super long ping pong thumbnail and his wrist is also quite low. (I took one semester of his online lessons at Artistworks so I'm familiar with his technique and nails -- his nail shape is somewhat straight-line but he looks at filing them a little different than you do it)
I realize that the sloped fingernail approach is a valid one and that many players use this quite effectively. I just wish these workshop topics would include multiple viewpoints since clearly there are others who use a rounded nail shape with equal effectiveness. It's possible that the Pumping Nylon method doesn't work for everyone and if there's only one way presented, guitarists will get the impression that they have to file their nails this way. This is what happened to me when Pumping Nylon came out and I took that advice as dogma. How about a follow-up nail workshop with someone who doesn't use the same approach? Maybe Hubert Kappel? I'm told by one of his students that he would file the nails of his students for them so maybe he has some interesting insight.
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