El nails look very natural, they are clear and just a bit shinier than your normal nail. I typically get nice comments on them when folks notice them and it’s a great conversation starter.
Last night I was sitting in the salon getting my nails done when I realized I should do an article as so many players ask about my nails at the shop. There are many ways to go and it’s a personal decision for each player. But here’s what I do and how I got there.
When I initially started playing Fingerstyle I used my own natural nails. The nails were weak, though especially at the end where they often broke, a serious impediment to progress so I switched to metal finger pics – the kind that many Blues players use. I used these for several years. They were extremely uncomfortable and I never liked the metallic attack on the strings.
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Then one day I found myself in New York City attending a workshop with Martin Simpson who was one of the instructors. The first song I heard them play was Rosie Anderson and the tone Martin produced was just amazing. Single notes were fat and clear and the overall tone was just beautiful sounding. After the performance we had a chance to meet and chat and he showed me his acrylic nails. Martin told me he goes to the salon every few weeks. I walked out of the door at Columbia University down the street to the first salon I could find and gave them my right hand!! It was pretty comical actually because they thought I wanted both hands done – I mean it was New York City after all. They didn’t speak much English but as soon as I made the motion of playing air guitar they understood.
This was probably 16 or 17 years ago and back then the acrylic nails were a powder and a resin that were mixed together and applied to the nail. Not a great product as it would dry out the original nail and was prone to chipping more often than it should. However over the past few years, a new acrylic nail gel product came out that is not only healthier for your real nail but much more durable and in fact a bit more flexible and better sounding.
The process is pretty simple, as the name implies – the product, which is a gel, goes on thick and gooey and levels itself. If it is your first time and if you want your nails to be longer they will first apply some fake nail tips to form a bridge for the new gel nail to go over. You then place your hand under a UV light which hardens and cures the gel in short order (warning this can get hot and burning, pull them out for a few seconds to cool and then reinsert them). There’s a few iterations of sanding your nails and adding coats of gel and drying under the UV. This takes about 30 or 40 minutes, then you are ready to go home and play. Well almost. One of the great benefits of this product is shaping. The standard nail file goes from course to fine so you can experiment with beveling your nail and polishing it to different ranges of smooth for the particular tone that you want for your music. Think about the bevel on your favorite pick and try for that for starters.
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The long-term care of these nails is pretty straightforward as well – about every 2 to 4 weeks depending on your own situation, you can go back to the salon for what is called a fill. This is where they simply fill in the portion of your nail that has grown out and add any more gel towards the base of your fingernail, fixing any minor nicks or things that need to be touched up.
Nail salon price varies around the country but anywhere from $20-$30 will get you a set of these nails, and fills usually range from $15-$20. Well worth it – I used to lose my pics all the time and now I simply can’t leave home without them.Sadie Dupuis offers up the benefits of the guitarist’s manicure and how to get your nails in shape for both playability and style.
It takes patience for me to tackle new and difficult guitar parts—but the patience required to paint my own fingernails? That kind eludes me. Until a few years ago, it was no great loss. I’ve been an avid guitarist since age 13, so on the few occasions I
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Get my nails done, the polish on my picking hand would wear away quickly. But the parts I write tend to be a blend of fingerstyle, heavy strumming, and outright shredding, often within the same song. This is fine in a recording session, where it’s easy to treat each part on its own with overdubs and effects. On stage, however, I found it harder to seamlessly recreate what came easily in the studio. If I played with my bare fingertips just after playing leads with a plectrum, my guitar dropped in presence and clarity. This is where the guitarist’s manicure comes in.
In 2015, backstage at a festival in Chicago, I got my first gel manicure. I didn’t expect it to last through our set, but the gel saw me through almost two weeks of touring. The heavy protective layer of polish allowed me to grow my nails a bit longer, achieving more control and volume than my short, bare nails, which would rip or break when I plucked 11s without polish. Eventually, I upgraded to acrylics and dipping powders, which allowed me to forego picks altogether. When I do gear-centric interviews and am asked what part of my rig has made the biggest change in my playing, I give props to my pedalboard but ultimately answer, “My nails.”
Folk multi-instrumentalist Johanna Warren was inspired to get acrylics after seeing virtuosic twelve-string player Alexander Turnquist. After she asked him for lessons, Turnquist told her simply to grow out her nails. “Best lesson I ever had, ” Warren tells me. “Getting acrylics opened up so many compositional possibilities and transformed my relationship to my guitar. The nails let you get
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There! You can get very specific about the timing and attack of every note, and play intricate rhythms with precision and power or lightly with a lot of nuance and delicacy.”
Etta Friedman, a riffer in the Los Angeles band Momma, first tried playing with press-on nails in an attempt to channel “some type of Rob Crow, Paul Simon, melodic picking genius.” After switching to acrylics, they were impressed at how well their nails were protected from their heavy playing’s usual damage to their fingers and cuticles: “[Acrylics] have provided me with a less painful and a more tonally interesting way to play guitar.”
Kaki King, an incredibly unique guitarist whose expansive style incorporates fret tapping, had to develop an equally unique signature manicure after she began playing with acrylics nearly 16 years ago. “You have to find that happy medium, ” she tells me. “My tapping will suffer because I don’t have as much direct downward perpendicular force [due to the acrylics]. I’ve learned to fingerpick with slightly shorter nails in order to allow the tapping to function.” She keeps her fretting hand bare, and wears acrylics with a tip extension on the picking hand except for the pinky.
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At the salon, be very clear about your intended length and shape. I usually show up with myfretting hand nails cut down as low as possible, because it’s rare for nail techs to believe I want them as short as I do. Warren, King, Friedman and I all opt for almond-shape nails, which mimics the curves of a normal pick, although Friedman is considering experimenting with something like stiletto nails to closer approximate their favorite Tortex Sharp picks.
Two to three millimeters is a good starting length for your first set of extensions, although you may wind up growing them longer (Warren and I prefer them about twice that length). You’ll also want to be conscious of how many coats of polish you want—I like about three, but your mileage may vary.
“How thick do you really want them? It’s about pick preference, it’s about tone and timbre, it all has to do with your personal style. It’s a rabbit hole to go down but it’s like you’re creating a new body part, it has to be very specific to you and what your playing is, so just be patient with the process of discovering that, ” advises King, who calls nails her “favorite topic.”
Press On Manicure Ideas For Flawless Valentine's Day Nails — Spa And Beauty Today
You’re likely to get some strange looks for wanting one hand short and one long, but every once in a while you’ll meet a nail tech or customer who relates to the strangeness of musically necessitated mismatched nail lengths, which is a nice conversation to have in the 45-90 minutes you can expect to spend at the salon
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