Butterfly Effect

​I am in the middle of changing my technique (again). And all I can think about is just how hard it is to play the guitar! One of the issues I explored today is changing the angle of my attack on the right hand fingers, I can alter the sound drastically, by simply bringing the top joint of the finger forward a couple of millimeters, I change from a flesh/nail contact to simply nail contact. Of course, if I want a finger attack that starts with flesh and ends on nail (the ideal), I would have to change this finger angle which by consequence also alters the wrist position and eventually the position in which my arm touches the guitar border. This is also very important because this point of contact with my arm is the center of balance for the weight of my whole arm resting on the instrument. If this contact is too forward (close to the wrist), I would have to tense up my shoulder so that my forearm doesn’t fall backwards onto the back of the guitar, and I would have little balance for my hand. If the contact with the forearm is too backwards (close to the elbow), then the point of contact of the string with the finger is not optimal and I would have to bend my wrist considerably to get a good contact with the strings.  All of this is then heightened by the fact that everybody has different arms and arms’ lengths, fingernail shapes, and finger lengths. Standardizing technique on the guitar seems like an impossible task. In any case, a simple issue on the guitar can create a butterfly effect that affects everything else. To add to that, nails grow daily, and therefore, the angle of attack changes constantly from day to day… How am I supposed to solidify a technique that has to change almost daily? 
​Carlos Bedoya, 06/09/23

Enjoy Marcin Dylla's magnificent playing while you enjoy reading my struggles :) 

---