It is sobering to think back on how much of my life I have spent taking care of and worrying about my fingernails. This started about five minutes after I got my first nylon-string guitar when I realized that classical guitarists are too classy to use fingerpicks.
No, I'm kidding, it is not that we are too classy, it is that the right hand technique is different. I have never played the banjo and only had a brief exposure to fingerpicks when I played steel-string guitar so I really don't know anything about those techniques. But just looking at how those picks are structured I can tell they really won't work for classical guitarists. Actually, there is a whole school of classical guitarists, following the maestro Emilio Pujol, who eschew the use of fingernails and just play with the flesh. But the vast majority of classical guitarists, including all the names you have probably heard, use their fingernails to produce the sound much as a clarinet or oboe player uses a reed.
At this point I am going to consult an outstanding book on guitar technique--my own, of course! The Guitarist's Complete Technique Kit published by Mel Bay. Here is a little note about the nails:
"It is sobering to think back on how much of my life I have spent taking care of and worrying about my fingernails."
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should ponder my nails a little more... (anything to get sober).
I find it funny you compare the guitarist's plucking nail to a reed. More of a plectrum on the harpsichord. I remember around 1985, when I heard some Eliot Fisk recitals in Yale's Sprague Hall, reading somewhere that his guitar teacher (how do I forget the name!?) was a founder not only of guitar at YMS but of a guitar repertoire, by transcribing so much harpsichord music. Probably not Segovia himself, but rather a parallel figure. I could just do the research but sometimes I like my memory to fade at the edges, it makes things hurt less I guess.
Perhaps a guitarists' nail clipper could be engineered to effect just the right rounded ramp in the cut nail as to be the perfect cam for the string action you describe. That string action surprises me in it's sound-board-directed motion, to pull and vibrate the string so it vibrates the wood up and down. I wonder how much that is also happening with my bowed strings? There's the consonant moment at the beginning of each stroke --the plucking moment, or "ichtus" to start the note), after which supposedly the bow is let up a bit to make the vowel of the note by just keeping the vibration going. I say "supposedly" only because I don't claim such control just yet in my development. But although the plucking moment does entail sinking into the string in the direction of the body of the violin (or gamba, etc), most of the action seems more parallel to the instrument than towards it.
I love the stringed instruments, making a pretty basic distinction in my mind between plucked or bowed (yet of course there is pizzicato) even though more and more I appreciate how much my viola da gamba is like a guitar, 6 strings and (only 7) frets, and how early gamba music and treatises grew out of lute music and lute players. Also the theorbo and harpsichord, in early 17th century music (including opera) the ensembles are small, with plenty of plucked strings (harpsichord, lutes & theorbos, etc) to go with the one or 2 violins and a bass viol or violone. With the exception of the violins, these instruments were quiter than modern concert orchestral instruments, and the music was played in smaller spaces. This is at least a decibal level where the guitar fits in, and this quietness suggests why the guitar is not an orchestral instrument and not too much of a concerto solo instrument, with exceptions like Rodrigo of course.
And even modern violinists fuss over their nails, mainly to eliminate them from the left hand. I don't know their feelings on the right, though my baroque teacher leaves the thumb nail optional (cut it off or use it) but is being pretty strict about getting the stick right there into the space between the nail and the high tip of the thumb itself, reminiscent of your nice diagram showing the string wedged into that spot.
Oh, yes, the plectrum of the harpsichord is a more exact comparison. I suspect that the guitar maestro Eliot Fisk might have mentioned was Oscar Ghiglia, student of Segovia with whom I also studied.
ReplyDeleteThere are two huge differences between the bowed instruments and the guitar (and lute, of course): the soundboard or top on the bowed ones is curved, not flat and there is a quite high narrow bridge instead of the low flat one on the guitar. I am certainly no expert on the bowed instruments, but the movement of the soundboard is likely very different!
Even we strange few who follow Pujol's example can spend quite a lot of time fussing about fingertips -- experimenting with moisturisers, getting the nail length just right to support the flesh and not get in the way, some players even file or sandpaper their fingertips. And if I get the slightest injury on the fingertip it can be nearly impossible to play well.
ReplyDeleteThe Bach sound lovely. I like the Allemande in particular.
Thanks so much, Steven!
ReplyDeleteI file the callouses on my LH fingertips fairly regularly.