Hi Stephen,

It is something completely specific to myself and my right hand, so not something I would advocate to other players although p,a can work up an excellent amount of speed and fluency.

When I was younger I had the tip of my middle finger cut off in an accident with a door, thus my middle finger is pretty much redundant when it comes to guitar playing. It is shorter than both my index and ring finger and also has a stunted and hooked nail bed shaped like a claw. The nail does not grow and there is no surface appropriate to strike a string cleanly an with and control.

It makes a very ugly buzzing and stragne noise and feels very odd plus I have to alter my whole right hand to try and get it to strike a string convincingly rather than just being an airshot!

I have to give pieces there own specific right hand fingering that works for my right hand which menas my right hand work often takes longer that my left hand preparations. It has become very normal to me now though and I can manage most repertoire. I have had to introduce i finger drags, and lots of more convoluted string crosses to deal with the standard 19th century rep where lots of arpeggios are involved, tremelo still offers difficulty but I find my way around most issues eventually. 

So for my scales in 4 I may do P a i a / P i a i etc..

Also I have developed a more detailed level of control over my thumb and can limit it's stroke so it does not appear as a down beat within a grouping of 4 and above. So I can use it in a relaxed and mor even fashion rather than it always being associated with an accent or a downbeat.

Matthew

--- In 10string@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Bright <stephen@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Matthew:
> 
> Can you tell us about your p i a scales?? First, it is very rare for 
> a guitarist to use p in their scales at all, let alone the 
> combination of p i a. I use p a m i for scales in 4, and I yet don't 
> see how p i a would work in 4 since the thumb would be coming in on a 
> weak beat. I can see them working great together in 3 though. Can you 
> please give us some more details?
> 
> Thanks,
> Stephen
> _________________________________
> 
> Stephen Bright, Classical Harp Guitar
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> 
> On Jun 24, 2009, at 2:45 PM, matthewmcallister@... wrote:
> 
> > Other than that lots of p i a scales
>