So...Steinar

Thanks for your concern! They're better now, after using moisturing balm since I posted about it, so it was probably a matter of dry skin around the fingernails. It was really weird,- it's quite normal that the fingerpicks hurts more some days than others (and some days you don't even notice they're there), but this was something different. Almost got me worried there for a while....

In the meantime I've practiced a lot playing barefingered, and it definitely has it advantages,- especially the feeling of total freedom of movement and the 'nearness' to the noise you make. The downside is less presence in the tone (especially on acoustic) so it's harder to cut through in band settings, and less speed (at least temporarily).
I'll most probably stick to using picks on acoustic, but not sure about the electric yet...

If you're experiencing some problems after a 3 week break from playing that's probably just normal, stick with it for a while and see how it goes. I received several emails from other players who mentioned that they had to use moisturing balms all the time to keep the fingertips in good shape, so perhaps you should consider trying that if you experience some problems?

Steinar

Hey, that's great news - glad to hear it worked. My wife has some stuff called Cetaphil <sp?>, and I've tried it on the knuckles before. Works great. I think I heard mention of that on SGForum too. We've been having some weird humid weather here in Los Angeles so the skin's really not that bad. I can understand if it's a colder, drier climate; L.A.'s usually hot and dry except for the last almost month or so.

Yah, my fingertips *didn't* hurt - that was the weird part. I expected it, was waiting for it, and it didn't happen. Not even that bruised-bone feeling you get sometimes. I *have* experienced that swollen feeling though, at times. It just happens when it happens I guess. In fact I find myself constantly checking that I have the right picks on the right fingers because they're so tight.

Other times, like you say, you forget they're on until you go to scratch your nose or something - whoa! :)

Interesting though, that by being forced to play without picks, you've gotten to an unexpected place perhaps - thinking about the possibilities of plaing bare fingered by choice. I heard of someone doing that, or maybe it was that one guy playing with just nails, like classical guys do. Can't think of his name offhand.

Funny thing, since I got back into fingerpicks after years and years, I'm sorta liking them - mostly because it sorta solves that one quandry, if that's the right word, that I've had for just about that long - playing bass guitar, which, in fingerstyle requires almost no nail showing on the picking fingers, and then playing all the other guitar types - with nails and flat picks. I'd always have to file the nails down for bass and then wait a week or so before the nails grew back to do fingerpicked tracks and whatnot. Now I can just pop on the fingerpicks!

Anyhow, glad you solved the painful fingertip thing.

Take care :)

Funny you should mention bass guitar, because that's what keeps me from playing lap steel and acoustic guitar with my fingernails. I have very strong nails and I don't think it would have been a problem for me to use them as my main 'picking tool', but I can't stand the sound of nails on a bass guitar...

I wish I could do ALL my playing barefingered, both on lap steel and regular guitar (never use fingerpicks on regular guitar, it's either barefingered or flatpick), so I could just pick up any instrument without going "uh, now where did I put those picks again...".

Who knows, since I've already developed some pretty heavy calluses on my right hand fingers perhaps I'll just stick to it and throw all my picks in the garbage........ :shock:

Some lap style players who never use fingerpicks include Kelly Joe Phelps, Harry Manx, Xavier Rudd, Ed Gerhard, Ben Harper, Daniel Lanois (pedal steel) and Bobbe Seymour (pedal steel),- some of these use thumpick and/or nails though...

8)
Steinar

Daniel Lanois sounds familiar. I don't know his stuff, it was just something I happened across once.

Funny, after I read your post, I thought of David Lindley, because I heard he didn't use picks, or I saw a picture of him play lap style with a flatpick or something. Turns out he uses everything in the world :)

But in googling stuff, I came upons this article by chance - regarding fingerpicks and whatnot - and it also answered a few questions I had about a guy I used to listen to. Can't play like him, but I loved hearing him. Saw him once too.

Leo Kottke

http://www.guitarmusic.org/kottke/ggpn87.html

Really an interesting read.

Now I know lap playing isn't anywhere as intense as the style Leo plays - actually there's not too many styles that are that intense - but I'd heard that he'd gotten tendonitis and then I sorta lost track of how things went for him. This is an old article, but it's still pretty interesting.

Heck, still have that bass guitar thing though! Maybe I'll learn to play everything with my elbows! I mean sometimes - rarely - I like to take the classical guitar out and play it, and for me at least, that's all about nails and filing and the proper sandpaper. On stage (also rare these days), I have always played *either* the guitar or the bass - never both in the same band situation. I couldn't get my mind around it anyhow, lol. So I guess it's not really that much of a problem. With recording, there's no time constraint because it's a home studio so I can take a break and let the nails grow, so there's no problem there either.

I just...wish...hehe.

Thanks for the link to the Kottke article,- that settles it! :wink:

To me it's a bit the other way around,- I play more relaxed with fingerpicks and sometimes get wrist fatigue when playing too long without them. But that's only on lap steel, and probably just a matter of adjusting the angle of my right hand.

I can really relate to what he says about playing more freely without picks and also having a stronger rhythmic sense. I did one gig without picks a few weeks ago - a R'n'B/swamp blues type of thing with mainly overdriven lap steel - and I surprised myself several times during that show, haven't had that much fun on a stage in a long long time... 8)

One barefingered lap steel player I forgot to mention is blues/fusion player Freddy Roulette, he gets a wonderful tone without picks.
Daniel Lanois is perhaps best known as a producer for artists like Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Emmylou Harris, and U2, but he's also a great songwriter and artist in his own right, and plays almost anything with strings on it, including pedal steel. As in everything else he does, his pedal steel playing is not of the most traditional style, but very beaufitul and 'effective'.
There's a video of him here, on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6vfeTC80LU

Steinar

I have a hard time with finger picks. not only are they uncomfortable I cannot ,no matter how I try, adjust to the feeling of having longer fingers.
having played with pick and bare fingers for so long I am accustomed to my style...too well.

when I put on those torture devices ( ;) ) I end up missing my mark. I feel my fingers' sensitivety is gone. and that little bit of extra metal short circuits my navigation; I feel my fingers are too long.

I am aware of other brands (I use Dunlop), but regardless, they pinch.

so I will stay with my hybrid method; flat pick held normally and middle finger picking out more strings and notes.
am I limiting my playing? perhaps.

am I limiting my playing?

Nah,- Tut Taylor - also known as "The Man Who Gave Flatpick a New Voice" - has had a great career only using a flatpick on his squareneck dobro. Plus there's a whole lot of players who switch between lap steel and regular guitar during songs that use a combination of flatpick and fingers.

So just keep on pickin'! 8)

Steinar

S- I didnt know that of Tut.

many many players use the pick in the same manner as I.
after forty years I doubt I will try to change.

watching a great player, as in Matthew Fox, I sometimes envy that natural alternating bass line he has ;looks so easily accomplished with finger style.

I have my version. so I wont gripe

it is true moving from stand up guitar to lap steel is seamless. I couldnt image stopping the gig in order to put the finger picks on...then get them out of order and start over.
dead air...scary.

I play with just my fingers on electric and acoustic and I rarely use a flat pick at all anymore except on a 12 string acoustic when I want to get some loud picking volume and ringing chords, I think it is because of the different sizes of the paired strings tuned at octive, just doesn't seem to work well with my fingers.

My favorite guitar is my Continental Tricone. It took a couple of years to get used to it but now I just love it. It never ceases to amaze me. I play in standard position, bottleneck style rather than lapstyle, I haven't started lapstyle playing yet.

I have tough fingernails and on the tricone I like to put maximum energy to individual strings, hook them with a fingernail and really pop them when playing some blues stuff, I like to put alot of feeling into some of those notes. I do the same thing on electric or wood body acoustics but the tricone with heavier strings is where it works the best for me.

Fingernails don't last long, I usually break one either while playing or doing something else but I have fun until then.

Every time I try finger picks I have to take them off - same reason that others have mentioned, what Dogbite wrote for example. I like to feel that I am touching the strings and the standard fingerpicks just don't suit my style and the effect I described above.

The closest I have come to picks with a basically good design that I think would work are the Alaska Pics but I don't like the soft plastic ones, too dull sounding for me.

I'll try some brass Alaska pics next, when I get around to it, they have to be somewhat better, but IDEALLY I would love to have some pics that match fingernails, fit close and tight like fingernails and made out of thin and somewhat flexible spring steel. Imagine that!!

That is an actual project of mine, making some as described but so far have not foud a suitable gage of spring steeel stock that is wide enough to make a complete pattern for a pick from a single piece of metal. I have found narrower strips that I can TIG weld or braze to a metal pick body but haven't got around to doing that. when I find the right size stock I will start making some prototypes from mild dteel or esier still, light guage copper and when I get the shape and pattern just right I will make a few from the spring steel. One of these days I'l find the right material.

By the way, Steinar, I was playing some slide recordings that I have on my computer for my pretty neighbor there is a very nice one and I couldn't remember where it came from. Turned out to be 'Northern Lights' which I downloaded from your website long ago.

I hope everything is going well for you with your new CD. I'll have to visit your website soon and see how you are doing.

Phangeaux - if you downloaded "Northern Lights" from my website then it's probably not the full version (?). You can dl a full version from eFolk music (it's free, just need to enter an email address) here -
http://www.efolkmusic.org/ArtMusic/ViewArtist.aspx?AID=1483

The CD is selling slowly, very slowly.......... ;)

Steinar

My copy from CDBaby is on it's way :D
along with Al Casey: hit list which features Richard Bennett- Knopfler's sideman.

Ah, so it was you who bought this month's copy on CD Baby! :lol:

Thanks! 8)

Steinar

Steinar, I wanted to get back to you on this CD of yours. Yes, I picked up some songs from your website, or from a link you provided in one of the 2 forums where I see you and this was while you were still working on the music I think, before the CD.

This is some Beautiful work you have done. I want to write more about it sometime soon, in another topic dealing specifically with the CD.

I listened to a couple of those songs over and over again the other night, (all night long actually), and the music fit the mood (sadness, pensive, spiritual) and circumstances so incredibly well I realized what a great work this is. I'll mention that in another post later on.

The songs were, God Only Knows, (I listened to most of the night) and it was without mind to the lyrics of the original song, just purely for the beautiful instrumental, and Northern Lights,

Without explaining the circumstances right now, (it's 6:39 am and I have been up all night so I can't write it well enough) I'll just copy some word definitions from the web that discribe it:

1. Deeply, often wistfully or dreamily thoughtful.
2. Suggestive or expressive of melancholy thoughtfulness.

pensive·ness n.
Synonyms: pensive, contemplative, reflective, meditative, thoughtful

These adjectives mean characterized by or disposed to thought, especially serious or deep thought. Pensive often connotes a wistful, dreamy, or sad quality: "while pensive poets painful vigils keep" Alexander Pope.

Contemplative implies slow directed consideration, often with conscious intent of achieving better understanding or spiritual or aesthetic enrichment

Reflective suggests careful analytical deliberation, as in reappraising past experience

Meditative implies earnest sustained thought

Thoughtful can refer to absorption in thought or to the habit of reflection and circumspection
--------------------

That's the best I can do right now, being tired.

It is a very rare occasion that I decide to buy a CD since I most often can't afford it, so it has to be really good and important in some way to have.

Yours is by far one of those and honestly, it is not because it is a very good CD and I happen to know you from the groups, (although those are good enough reasons), but all of that aside, my reason is beyond that, it is a very beautiful and very special work.

I'll write more on this later when I am not so tired and I can communicate better.

No need to reply to this one, you've got better stuff to do.

phangeaux

Phangeaux - if you downloaded "Northern Lights" from my website then it's probably not the full version (?). You can dl a full version from eFolk music (it's free, just need to enter an email address) here -
http://www.efolkmusic.org/ArtMusic/ViewArtist.aspx?AID=1483

The CD is selling slowly, very slowly.......... ;)

Steinar

I think you have expressed the CD really well. I posted recently at Steel Guitar Forum my revisit to this CD by Steinar.
it has incredible staying power.
I'll take every opportunity to tout this work. it really is unlike anything Ive heard, yet it speaks or nods to all my favorite genres of music.
truly a brilliant work.
I am thrilled that Steinar is a regular poster on this forum and others.
a generous and talented man.

thumbs up dude.