Or maybe I don’t keep my fingertips long enough. At any rate, it seems that within hours of cutting my nails, as SHORT as I can possibly get them, they are already getting in the way. I notice this especially when I need to hold a barre position with my index finger and need to fret a note on one of the upper-register strings. This means I have to sharply curl the fretting finger, which means that the fingertip is angled towards the nail when I do this, and it’s almost impossible to fret the note cleanly. It’s worse if I have my finger at an angle towards the length of the neck, because then the corner of the nail is very apt to interfere.
What can I do to combat this, short of having a few extra layers of skin grafted onto my fingertips? It’s frustrating to know a piece of guitar music, but not be able to execute it due to physical limitations.
My husband has been playing guitar since the beginning of time, and I read him this question. He said that over time, you’ll develop calluses on your fingertips- thick, hard calluses which really ARE like having extra layers of skin grafted on. That will take care of your issue.
He plays out 6 nights a week and when he dives he even wears neoprene gloves so that his don’t get all soft and squishy on him. It sounds gross because it kind of is
I second BoBettie. Give it time. But it’s also true that you’ve got to keep your left-hand nails quite short (or right-hand nails, for lefties). I keep a nail clipper and emery boards in my guitar case. You’ve got to stay on top of them.
A related problem, depending on your style of playing, is how to take care of your right-hand nails. Again, a nail file is handy. Whenever you get a chip or crack, file the nail down, and that will help prevent the crack from lengthening. Sort of like drilling a hole at the end of a crack in plastic or fiberglass.
But I’ve been playing for decades, off and on. I played avidly from about 1980 through 1995, then picked it up again about two years ago. I play mostly classical these days.
Generally I work in at least 45 minutes of practice a day, said practice consisting mostly of either learning new pieces or trying perfect the ones I know. I rarely just do exercises such as scales. Would it help if I did more of that?
Maybe I should try wearing a neoprene glove on my left hand when I play.
I’m not sure to what degree the calluses need to be built up to stop the problem but I can honestly say that about the first 1/4" of skin on my husband’s fingertips are completely solid calluses. Just thick, hard skin that you could probably stick a pin right in and he wouldn’t feel it. He plays for an average of 4 hours a day (sometimes more sometimes less but that’s a safe average) so that’s probably why they’re so thick. Even with those thick calluses, he protects them from getting soft- he tries not to get his hands wet for long periods, things like that.
I don’t think yours probably have to get that crazy thick, but possibly close to it.
I too was wondering from your OP if, perhaps, you were new at this. From your second post, even though you might have taken a long break from regular playing, it surprises me that being back on it for two years you’re still experiencing a problem.
It really just seems that you’re hyper-aware of your fingertips/fingernails.
My advice, when I thought you might be new at this, would have been that with time you’ll just get so used to it you won’t notice anymore and you’ll naturally find a position that frets the strings properly without unintentionally muting or dampening the string you want to sound.
My fingers are never on a 90 degree angle to the fretboard. The angle my fingers are placed at keep my fingernails off the board (I sometimes go quite a while without trimming the nails) yet the angle is not such that I end up muting the next highest string.
I know some kick-ass women guitarists (and bass players) who have quite “lady-like” sculptured nails that extend far past their fingertips but never have any problems.
So, in short, if you were a newbie I’d tell you “it will come with time”. Since you’re not a newbie- don’t know what to tell you.
Off on a “fingernails of the right hand” tangent. There’s an L.A. comedian who has a great bit- and I hate to quote her without being able to tell you her name so you can check her out, but I just can’t think of her name right now. The bit:
First, if you’re playing a nylon-stringed classical guitar, you’re never going to develop the kind of callouses a steel-string player will get. Second, if you stopped for ten years, your callouses will disappear. Still, they should come back in two years (but you’ve still got the nylon-string factor to deal with). And, parenthetically, if you’re playing classical, you are, or should be, paying a lot of attention to your right-hand nails.
And no matter how long you’ve been playing, you’ll still have to pay attention to your nails. So do what I do. Keep the clippers and the files handy. If your nails feel too long, get them out and fix the problem. No problem. There’s nothing wrong with taking out the emery board and fixing your nails before every practice session.
Actually, I’m playing a Takamine dreadnought, but I’ve got it strung with nylon strings that are much like what you have on a classical model. Still, I was using steel strings before that. Come to think of it, I don’t remember noticing the problem until the last six months or so, so it’s possible that by moving to the nylon strings, which I did for the sake of tone, I have brought this upon myself. OTOH, my reading and playing has gotten so much better during the last six months that this whole problem could be a result of trying new music.
I do, but most of my practice is in the early morning, when other people in my house are asleep. With my right hand, therefore, I tend to avoid bright hard attacks with the nails; and rather just attempt to produce even tones with my fingertips. I don’t worry about the right hand quite as much as I do about producing clean notes with the left.
And no matter how long you’ve been playing, you’ll still have to pay attention to your nails. So do what I do. Keep the clippers and the files handy. If your nails feel too long, get them out and fix the problem. No problem. There’s nothing wrong with taking out the emery board and fixing your nails before every practice session.
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I will do that–heck, maybe even have them done professionally. It’s cheap, and worth the money.
You’re probably right. Even more adventurous classical guitarists don’t like to mess around with steel strings because of the risk of damage to their right-hand nails.
But people who play nylon strings exclusively don’t really need the kind of callouses a steel-string player needs, so it doesn’t really matter.
Have you tried dipping my fingertips into surgical alcohol? It makes them hard and slightly numb, ideal for playing but a rather nasty sensation. I bite my nails way down on the left hand - about 1/4" below where the top of the nail growth used to be - which is ideal, though it looks really nasty.
But the underlying point of the thread is that nylon string players may still need calluses so our nails don’t interfere with fretting the notes. Or at least I seem to.
I have been tracking this thread hoping someone would come up with something. Unfortunately this has never been a problem for me - if I keep my fretting-hand nails reasonably short, I have no issues.
I have big fat fingers, though, and can have problems doing certain chord forms - heck even A major was next to impossible at first. But somehow, I just kept at it 'till my fingers found a way…I suppose it is an idiotic question, but have you just tried forcing it - i.e., fretting so hard that either your fingernail flexes over a little or something? I have old guitars where the rosewood fboard has obvious nail wear marks, so somebody must’ve just forced it in the past…
I’m not so sure that callouses in and of themselves will take care of the problem. Certainly your fingertips will get harder, so they’ll probably deform less when pressing the string to the fingerboard. But they won’t grow so large that they’ll extend beyond your fingernails, if your nails aren’t properly trimmed.
:smack: