5 Tips on Picados in Flamenco Guitar As Beginner

Picados is one of the most spectacular techniques in guitar, but there are several tips about this technique that I thing that a beginner should understand. Picados is a technique similar to staccato when a melody is rapidly played by pucking whit his nails the strings alternating index and middle fingers.  These are tips on my own. Therefore it is only opinion!

1. Do you have time? Picados is a time consuming technique. If you have enough time or it is really what you want to do it is ok, but think that you need time for training clear and quick picados. Otherwise it will sound rushed.

2. Take care with your fingers positions. There are thousands of videos and teachers that teach how to do picados. It is usual that in their explanations they spread the fingres out even though they do not do it when they play quickly. This was the old way to perform picados. But if you look at the hands of modern flamenco guitarists the position is more similar to a claw.

3. Take care with bad habits!. Picados is a tricky technique in despite of it apparent simplicity. Plucking with index finger and middle finger have to be strictely alternated.

4. Obsession with Paco (or his style)? Paco de Lucía has been the most famous and one of the best players and well known by picados. But Paco de Lucía was a professional, a genius, unique. He was not the only flamenco player in the world and picados was only one of the techniques that he used. There are other great professional flamenco guitarists that does not uses picados profusely as Pepe Habichuela. ¿Are you professional?¿Can you play every day eight hours?...  Sometimes, it is more realistic to discover other techniques as flamenco arpeggios. The modest thumb can also do greats things and usually requires less time. Remember that Paco de Lucía said that “in flamenco silences are so important than notes” and he complained about people that were focused only in his picados. 

5. Picados has order, ‘compás’ and rythm. Usually each picado plucking corresponds to a quaver in the 'compas'. For example a complete 12 beat ‘compás’ in bulerías has 24 notes. And they have also accents corresponding to the style (palo).