Ukulele Picking With Fingernails

Video Transcript

"The last way that I'll discuss picking the ukulele is with your fingernails. Now in strumming in the last segment, we saw that you could try and hold an invisible pick for example. Just put your fingers together so that you get the outside of your fingernails to hit the strings. That's one way. Another way would be more of the classical approach, or even flamenco, where you would grow your fingernails longer so that you have your fingernails sticking out above the finger tip. And in that respect, you can use those fingernails as picks so that when they strike the string, mine aren't very long, but you get that type of sound. It's very similar to a pick, but it's slightly different tone. That's with a pick, that's with the fingernail. So it's a little bit brighter. Now you can use those fingers, again, might be all three fingers that you're using. It'll allow you to play very quickly, once you have the talent to do that. Also your thumb nail could be used, or you could use synthetic fingernails which wrap around your fingers like steel guitar players. Now if you're going to use those, you might be having a ukulele that has steel strings rather than nylon because you might wear those strings down pretty quickly."