Fingernails

In this lesson we'll talk about the important topic of fingernails. The first thing I can tell you for certain is that it's absolutely a bad idea to have long finger nails on your fretting hand. That'll make it impossible to fret and I don't know of any guitar players who have ever pulled this off.

Some guitar players, especially in the classical world, have really long finger nails on their picking hand, and that can be a great thing if you have strong enough nails for it. Personally, I've never been able to grow my nails strong enough to withstand the abuse of the metal strings, but some people have naturally strong nails and probably a softer overall touch than I do on the guitar.

For a while I had four fake acrylic nails on my picking hand, but I never really liked how those sounded against the strings. The important thing to know is that you absolutely don't need to have long nails on your picking hand. So many great finger pickers get by without it, and you can too.