CasanovaGuy
Well-known member
I keep my fingernails short, but that's mainly because I wanna look presentable for my coworkers and future dates lol. Below are some points strictly from a playing perspective.
For your strumming hand: Long nails are great for tremolo picking and–to a lesser extent–fan strumming, but they make artificial harmonics way harder. Short nails are the exact opposite. These three techniques are relatively advanced, so you don't really have to worry about strumming hand nail length unless you're dead-set on learning Spanish guitar-sounding stuff (long nails would be best) or learning mellow fingerstyle stuff (short nails would be best).
For your fretting hand: Short nails are better, period. Long nails make it harder to play relatively simple chords like G and E7, and they also make it harder while picking stuff (e.g. picking notes on the C and A strings at the same time).
Hope this helps!
For your strumming hand: Long nails are great for tremolo picking and–to a lesser extent–fan strumming, but they make artificial harmonics way harder. Short nails are the exact opposite. These three techniques are relatively advanced, so you don't really have to worry about strumming hand nail length unless you're dead-set on learning Spanish guitar-sounding stuff (long nails would be best) or learning mellow fingerstyle stuff (short nails would be best).
For your fretting hand: Short nails are better, period. Long nails make it harder to play relatively simple chords like G and E7, and they also make it harder while picking stuff (e.g. picking notes on the C and A strings at the same time).
Hope this helps!