Rob MacKillop is the godfather of modern no-nail playing, and he has a new album out: Giovanni Paolo Foscarini: the Complete Works for Baroque Guitar in the Lute Style. None of the works have been recorded before, and Rob plays them wonderfully — a must listen!
Brandon Acker has made another fun no-nail video. This time doing a side-by-side comparison of the sound between himself (with nails) and Christopher Wilke (without):
In my experience, the differences among no-nail and nail players is greater than the differences between them, and so such a comparison should be taken with a pinch of salt. It is as much a comparison between two individual ways of playing, which itself is quite interesting.
Here’s a curious historical fact. Famously, Fernando Sor advocated playing without nails while his friend, Dionisio Aguado, advocated playing without. Did you know that Sor wrote a guitar duet, Les deux amis op. 41, for he and his friend Aguado to play? Oh how I would have loved to have been at that performance!
I’ve added a page addressing what is probably the question I get most frequently asked — can you play tremolo without nails!? Read my answer here.
No-Nail Guitar 
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