Lynda Irvine great to have you here, please let me know if you have any questions of doubts! 

Peter thanks a lot for your comment. Great to have you here, looking forward to seeing your results! 

Vincent Tam great to have you here and thanks for your question! I normally like to keep me m finger outside the hand (which is always healthier than keeping it inside the palm of your hand). Maybe it would help if you practice the Abanico with a little stretch on your m finger (it doesn‘t have to be completely streched, just a little so that it doesn‘t desturb the ring and index fingers).

Also try to let your hand loose when the index finger comes down. You should feel that when doing it slowly (ex.3!) your wrist is completely relaxed in the movement going down.

please let me know if it helps you a little bit!

Vincent Tam thank you very much for the video! It is already looking great! I like the sound on your Rasgueados (exercise 1) very much!

Be careful that you still count on 3 in the Abanico (exercise 3) and play the triplets. It sounds a little bit as if you would wait (or take a short break) between the movement of the thumb going upwards and the ringfinger going downwards, as if the ringfinger would be too late. I would suggest to practice it very slowly with metronome and for every beat one movement at a time (feel that you always have the same „time-space“ between every movement and that no finger is coming too early or too late). Let me know if this helps a little bit. Keep up the good work! 

Steve Pederson great to have you here! Everything looked already very good, I can see that you already have some experience doing these techniques.

here are some suggestions that might help you a bit.

1. in the Rasgueado you could try to position your hand a little closer to the strings especially the right part of your hand. This would allow the ring finger to be closer to the strings and get a better attack on them. 
 

2. alzapúa already looking great. I always recommend to do the golpe (the slap) with the middle and ringfinger (both curved) and to slightly go underneath the first string. Maybe this could help you to stay in a more relaxed position while speeding up the technique. Of course when it gets faster you won‘t be able to let your hand fall down, it‘s just the feeling of letting your hand completely loose that has to be trained in a slow tempo.

3. Abanico, try to stretch a little bit your m finger so that it doesn‘t get in your way. Other than the normal rasgueado where we start in a hand-closed position, we want the hand to be a little more open when playing the abanico because most part of the work comes more from the wrist than from the fingers itself.

i hope this helps a little bit, keep up the good work, as I said earlier it looks great already. Please let me know how it feels with this small adjustements

Barney great to have you here and thanks for your question! 
I have made some bad experiences with removable protectors, since they are normally not thick enough. Altough this one in particular sounds thick enough I would be very carefull by trying out for the Alzapúa, since it is the movement were we slap on top the most. In any case it is great to have a protection (even a thin one) for the Rasgueados and the Abanico so for sure it will be worth trying it out. Please let me know if it works!

Barney thanks a lot for your question! As you might know, Flamenco is a very wide topic that has many different musical and technical aspects. That‘s why unfortunately I had to decide on what types of techniques and exercises I wanted to focus on for this challenge. I haven‘t planned goint into detail regarding the „piccados“ (fast scales). However I would love to give you some suggestions that might help you a little bit…

the classical guitar has in fact a higher bridge thats why I would highly recommend you to try out different string-tensions. You will clearly feel the difference between high, medium and low-tension.

I really like the Savarez, Knobloch or Luthier Strings medium tension (these are my favourites).

regarding the attack I like to place my hand a little bit closer to the bridge and turn my hand a little more to the right so that I get a more „naily“ sound. However there is no right or wrong, I have seen many different handpositions over the years…Paco de Lucía, Sabicas, and Vicente Amigo f.ex. They all have quite different ways of playing the piccados and they all sound great. so you really have to experiment different positions to find the one you feel comfortable.

in my opinion the most important thing is that the attack is as short as possible and that you have the same sound on your index- and middlefinger. Also try to play with shorter nails, since you don‘t want any resistance while sliding thought the string.

Make sure to check out the piccado exercises that maestro Andrés Batista has, I did many of them and his former student Javier Conde has one of the best Piccados on the planet…so they can‘t be bad ;-)

Please let me know if any of this tips helped you a little bit! 

Barney 

Barney I haven‘t found any youtube video, but Javier Conde plays a lot of Batistas repertory. Maybe you can find some videos on his Instagram or Facebook account! 

Debbie great to have you here and thanks a lot for your video! It is already looking good however I have a few tipps that might help you to improve a little more ;-)

1. Rasgueado, try to position your thumb on the 6th string so that your hand stays in a stable position. We want the fingers to work alone without any further help of your wrist coming down. This will make it harder for the fingers but after a while you will see that it sounds more crispy once your fingers get to a certain speed. 
 

2. Alzapúa

make sure that your m and a finger are doing the slap together if it is possible. I see that your m finger is staying stretched and your a finger is going underneath the first string. I would do the same, but instead of just going underneath with the ringfinger I would do it with both at the same time. Remember, they are connected anyways since they have the same tendon!

3. already looking great! Remember to always accentuate on the movement upwards so that we get the accent on the first triplet.

please let me know if this helped you a little bit :-) looking forward to hearing your results!