Yes guitarists, you've heard the horror stories. There you are playing electric or steel string acoustic; you've taught yourself well. You've heard those flamenco players, those classical players and now —you feel— you're ready to tackle nylon strings.

But what happens? Under your able hands the strings sound like rubber bands. They certainly don't SING like you know they can.

Then you read in a book. Or perhaps somebody tells you. To your face. You will have to unlearn everything you ever learned and start from scratch. Your technique, especially you're right hand technique, is ALL WRONG.

Don't Despair. Try David Nigel Lloyd's fool-proof classical guitar method. Guaranteed results in just a few weeks!

Actuallly, there is no David Nigel Lloyd method, fool-proof or otherwise. There is certainly no guarantee. Sadly, if you want to play classical or flamenco guitar— well— the horror stories are all too true. You will have to break the habit of letting your left thumb peek out over the bass-string side of the neck. It belongs firmly behind the neck at all times. Certainly, it must never bear down on the sixth string at the second fret to assist in a D major chord. (You've been doing that, haven't you?) The wider classical fingerboard won't allow that kind of misbehavior. To better access the neck, you will have to put your left foot up on foot rest and rest your guitar on your left thigh, not the right thigh as seemed natural. As for your right hand. First, you will have to grow, trim, and PROTECT your thumbnail and fingernails carefully in a specific way. Then you will have to learn an entirely new way of plucking the strings if you want (a) any kind of decent tone to emerge from your instrument and (b) any kind of decent volume. You will have to learn free strokes and rest strokes and your hand won't like it.

CONSIDER: Your left hand is your vocabulary. Your right hand is your voice.

You must ask yourself then: Do you need to strengthen your vocabulary? What is your voice like? Does your voice match your vocabulary? In other words, do you have a pleasant voice and nothing to say? Do you have volumes to speak but in a voice that whispers and stammers? Or do you have SOMETHING to say in a voice that is harsh or halting?

I found myself about two or three years ago in the latter situation. Though, I have always enjoyed classical guitar, I had and have no intention of becoming a classical player. Or a flamenco player. So I borrowed a copy of a video called VOLUME ONE of the MASTERY OF THE FLAMENCO GUITAR SERIES by GUILLERMO RIOS.

After two years, I'm still working on lesson one! Free strokes and rest strokes. One needs, I realized, to develop an intimate knowledge of the string and just where and how to pluck it. I am finally getting the tone and volume I want most of the time. Before, I could get nice warm tones but very softly. No volume at all.

If you seriously want to become a classical, flamenco, or nylon-strung jazz guitar player, you will almost certainly have to find a teacher. There are a number of books and videos to get you going but classical guitar, for instance, has rigorous demands. There are many opportunities for the self-taught player to go wrong. You must master your own voice and vocabulary like any other guitarist. However, you must also master the vocabularies and voices of hundreds of composers whose music your fingers must sing. Read no further. Get a teacher.

For me I was already using some very basic rasqeado strokes and tremolo effects which I had pinched from the classical guitar records to which I was listening. Everything I was doing in regular tuning seemed to lend itself to nylon string playing whereas what I was playing in alternate tuning did not. I had received a very nice Garcia classical as a tip in 1989 when I had performed in San Louis Obispo at the late lamented Earthling Bookstore. Playing this instrument, I began to hear how alluring nylon strings sound when you massage a vibrato out of them.

If, like me, you want to adapt nylon strings to what you are already playing, you will still need to spend 18 months to 2 years learning a different right hand technique. Why? If the whole key to nylon-string playing concerns volume and appealing tone, then sooner or later you will seek out those playing methods which solved the problem ages ago.

CONSIDER: The storehouse of classical technique is formidable. But don't be taken in by the maestro's evening attire and piercing eyes. Take what you need and run!

Yamaha APX6NA

Here is the compromise I made with the world of nylon-string playing. I purchased a Yamaha APX6NA. It has a fingerboard with the width of a steel string guitar (I'm not about to abandon the left hand thumb assist.). It is a thin line acoustic instrument with a piezo transducer under the bridge. Acoustically and electrically it has a pleasant bright sound. It is lacking the dark sonorous low tones of a full bodied instrument, however. Piezo pickups for nylon strings sound somewhat natural whereas the same pickups used on steel strings sound brittle to me. It's a pleasant serviceable instrument.

I applied what I had taught myself about chords and scales then to nylon strings. Though I'm no musical theoretician, my left hand, my vocabulary, had always been somewhat strong. My left hand could not say what I wanted, however. That is what I've worked on. That has been my struggle.

The Swiss or China Silk method of nail repair

the ping pong ball method of nail reinforcement

acrylic nails for guitarists

flamenco guitarist tries all but prefers...

Gene Moles in the 1960s

GENE MOLES RE-CAPITATES MY GUITAR — GITA ADORNS IT

Five years ago, a gust of wind blew my guitar case over in a parking lot after a school-gig. It didn't fall far at all. However, upon opening the case, I discovered the headstock had popped right off the neck. My guitar repairman, Gene Moles, had his shop right round the corner. I headed over on the double. Gene gave the injury his professional eye. On the wall behind him was an American flag Telecaster.

"Hey, is that Buck Owens' guitar?" I asked.

It was indeed. I had just missed the great man by minutes. Gene had been a key figure back in the old Bakersfield Sound days. He had played in numerous country bands. He had played with Buck and with Merle Haggard on occasions. He also wrote tunes for the Ventures who played mostly Mosrite guitars with their distinct 'surf' tone. Mosrites were built in Bakersfield and Gene Moles was for many years the company's quality control man.

But Gene was not well when I slinked bashfully into his shop with my decapitated Yamaha. In fact he was dying. He had just been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. "I guess I played one too many smoky bars," he said ruefully, adding, "My sister died of this a couple of years ago." My guitar, he told me, would be ready to go in about three weeks. He was ready to go now, he added with only the slightest tinge of apprehension.

The repair itself took only a week. Gene waved the guitar around by the reattached headstock, delighted in my obvious horror. "If I can't do THIS," he explained, "it won't take the pressure of the strings." He had in fact restrung the instrument. To prove his point he played a few bars of some pretty country lament in C major. It was February as I recall, and it had been raining for weeks. He needed a dry day to apply the veneer.

The veneer however, did not match the original color well. So, I asked gita to paint something on the headstock to disguise the mismatch. By this time, Gene's son Jody had flown in from Arizona to help out. He advised gita on what sort of paints to use. I asked her to paint the wild boar skull we had found half sunken at the bottom of an arroyo on Santa Cruz Island in 1981. I also wanted a rose.

I sing about her painting in "These Idiot Blues."

headstock painting by gita Lloyd

She paints me a picture of the skull
of a wild boar and a rose.
How dark pink the petals grow
round what was once the wild boar's nose.

Jody told me he and his dad were waiting for another dry day so they could varnish the headstock again. It was about a ten day wait. Gene seemed pleased with the result when I arrived ecstatically to pick up the guitar. He certainly did not look well. Jody looked anxious to close down the shop and take his dad home. It was probably one of the last repairs Gene Moles ever did. He died that April.

for more about Gene Moles from people that Know...

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