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Nando right hand
rarely_plays
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Nando seems to use his thumb and index more and his wrist less. Great tone. Any thoughts?
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Great it works for him, I certainly won't chase that.
www.scoredog.tv
I had never seen him playing so thanks for that. Yes, picking way back near the bridge and a nice vibrato on a 'chorus' style guitar which one would expect to have a more mellow tone all adds up to a great sound. Gives me something to work on.
that's a really slow tempo. Sounds beautiful. I wonder if he changes his technique at a faster tempo...
Every video I've seen him playing, he's predominantly doing this picking from the thumb joint thing.
Probably a pretty low-action setup, my guess.
I feel like this isn't a completely uncommon technique, at least in terms of extending out fingers - I refer to it as the "crab" approach, although typically we see players curl their 2-4 fingers so they move under the strings as guides when descending to the lower register (e.g. Joscho). A huge advantage to this vs. the more "fist" technique (e.g. Gonzalo) is you can fire off a shit ton of down strokes much more quickly because you're less confined to using the full wrist and have a lot more range of motion by freeing up the thumb and index away from the other fingers. Of course, many players also use a hybrid technique that incorporates both depending on what they're trying to execute (e.g. Bireli).
Nando in this video looks like he's got more of a Benson stance than a "crab" player like Joscho but the principle to me looks the same, especially in that his fingers brushing across the soundboard serve as "guides" for the picking attack. Probably the most unique (if not ultimate) extension of this technique would be Jimmy...and main thing to know about his idiosyncratic right hand is the 2-4 fingers are still brushing across the soundboard as guides.
I should add the above is all based upon my observations of right hands for the past 8-9 years now and made while trying to learn how to build my own right hand technique - I'm certainly no expert, nor any of my invented terms about it endorsed by anyone lol, it's just how I started internally referencing the many differing right hand techniques I was observing. As for myself now, I was originally more of a "fist" player but I've started experimenting with fingers on the sound board for licks/phrases that require multiple double downs and/or on multiple octave arps where that extra foundation provides enough added control I can execute them with more rhythmic consistency.
Last, and somewhat related, my completely unproven theory is that range of thumb motion in large part dictates right hand...I feel like people with big hitchhikers thumbs like me tend to go for a more "fist" or "hybrid" approach due to the thumb's natural stance when holding the pick while a lot of "crab" players tend to have more locked, non-hitchhiker's thumbs. I'm probably somewhat full of it on this but if/when you start paying attention to players' thumbs, the impact on the right hand is absolutely noticeable (Adrien's a great one to watch for his active thumb movements).
(and yeah, I probably shouldn't have had that extra cup of caffeine this afternoon...)
e: Adrien/Adrian correction
Adrian's a great one to watch for his active thumb movements
You mean Adrien? Adrian doesn't seem to move the thumb around much
I've noticed he does a little bit. And not that long ago someone asked about it on the forum and asked how does that affect the sound/tone/technique. But if Nando is 80/20 thumb/wrist ratio then Adrien is the opposite.
Edit, it was here:
Yup, my bad - meant the very talented Adrien M, not the also very talented Adrian H :)
I've been listening to Samson Schmitt recently and loving his tone. It's like a pinnacle of the sound of this genre. Went to YT to look closely at his picking and it seems like he's doing quite a bit of moving his thumb to drive the pick through the string.
Why is the tone so elusive...on a surface he's just picking on the guitar, nothing special of different or complicated about it. Looks like something you'll dial in within a few months, maybe a year. But I sometimes still cringe at my sound at times, after all these years.