Question for guitar players - rest vs free stroke on uke

Today I started a group guitar workshop class to brush up on some of my skills before the school year starts (in addition to uke and choir, I teach guitar to junior high students). We focused today mostly on single note melodic playing on the top three strings. We did some playing with a pick, but spent a lot of time on fingerpicking, exclusively in the style of an alternating rest stroke between index and middle fingers.

That got me thinking about my own technique on uke. My version of the rest stroke in uke is with the thumb to get a warmer, rounder bolder sound did doing a single note melody. On fingerpicking stuff I use four finger PIMA style on what I would call a free stroke. Very different from what it appears to be standard on guitar...

Would love to hear people's thoughts on rest vs free stroke, as well as guitarists sharing how their fingerpicking technique differs in their guitar from their uke playing.

I started playing uke first but started classical guitar at the end of last August.

I changed my finger playing style on the the uke to a more traditional classical guitar technique. . I use to to pluck the string toward me instead of pushing the string down.


Rest stroke - finger pushes the string and comes to rest on the next string, I'll straighten my finger and pull from the big joint


Free stroke - finger still pushes the string but goes over the top of the next string and comes back to rest in playing position, picture a pendulum swinging


I love the sound of a rest stroke but it's not conducive to super fast playing like a free stroke. I find the rest stroke brings a lot of dynamics to the sound

I used to practice a lot of rest stroke. Picados, arpegios even tremolo. It develops strenght in your fingers. Not that i play all the time like that, its just to practice. Cause i think that its easier to play at low volume than to play loud n clear. For example no amplification, or playing by the fire, or soloing with a crazy guitar mate Lol