A Lucky Night in Christchurch
A few weeks ago I got to play Albeniz's Asturias with an orchestra in Christchurch, in front of about 800 people. It's a piece I'd quietly given up on ever performing, and if you'd told me a few years ago I'd get through it in front of a crowd that size I'd have laughed. I got through it, much better than I expected. I'm still not entirely sure how.
The problem that nearly ended my guitar playing
Classical guitar is played with the nails of the right hand ‚ they're part of playing the instrument, not a detail. For years, mine kept giving up on me. Thin, splitting, breaking at the worst possible moments, usually doing normal day-to-day things – reaching inside a bag, opening a door. I'd lose a nail and lose weeks of practice with it. If you've ever searched for a nail strengthener for guitar players out of pure frustration, you have my sympathy ‚ I spent a long time in that exact spot, trying everything available but they just didn’t work well enough. Some made them worse.
Not finding much that helped
I'm a hospital doctor by trade, so I went looking for something that might actually work, the way I'd look into anything else. Mostly what I found was confident marketing and not much behind it ‚ products that promised a lot and delivered, at best, a nice-smelling varnish. Nothing seemed to have been properly tested.
Out of that fairly ordinary frustration, and with some help from a research background I happened to have lying around, I put together a way of testing nail strength and a formula using hydrolysed keratin from New Zealand wool ‚ Dr Tom Nailcare started life as something I made for my own hands, long before it occurred to me that anyone else might want it too.
Slowly, and unevenly, getting my hands back
It wasn't instant, and I won't pretend it was an immediate turnaround. But gradually my nails held up a bit better, with fewer breaks, a bit more flexibility, fewer setbacks. Slowly, pieces I'd shelved out of embarrassment more than anything else started coming back onto my music stand. *Asturias* was one of those.
What that night actually meant
I don't think I've earned any particular right to stand on a classical guitar stage. I'm an amateur who happens to love the instrument, not a professional. So getting through that performance mostly left me feeling grateful: to the orchestra and conductor for having me, to whatever luck was involved on the night, and to having nails that finally let me practice properly instead of getting in my own way.
FAQ
Why do classical guitarists get weak or breaking nails?
The right-hand nails act like a pick in classical guitar technique, so they take constant mechanical stress. Thin or brittle nails split and break the stresses of day-to-day activities, which is why many guitarists end up needing more nail care than most people would.
Can a nail strengthener really help guitar playing?
It can help, provided it's actually strengthening the nail rather than just coating it. Coatings can work in the short term, but in the longer term the solvents needed to remove than and the damage done when they flake of or need to be buffed off, end up leaving the underlying nail weaker than it ever was.
What helped with the nails behind this story?
A nail strengthening formula built around hydrolysed keratin from New Zealand wool, tried out on the founder's own hands long before it was ever offered to other guitarists and customers.
Dr Tom
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