mmorgan

sharke
Bert Jansch was the master of this. 

Nice to see Bert mentioned, he and Renbourne had a major influence on me back around '66 to '71. I think I use almost all of the above techniques. The past 7 years or so I was doing hybrid with a flat-pick and fingers, very good for jazz stuff. The last few months I've gotten back to all fingers again and using the pads in almost all cases except where I'm trying to pull the string up a bit as mentioned above. I love playing guitars...and truth be told guitars themselves.  Regards,

If you ever come across a Bert Jansch tablature online, chances are it's mine btw! I tabbed 50 or 60 of 'em about 10 years ago and they seem to be on all the tab sites.

sharke: That's pretty cool about the tab. Don't listen to Bert solo much anymore but the "Bert and John" album does get some rotation.
 
TheBand19: sweet quiver! Mine got reduced awhile back but I see I'm up to six again. Each one different.
 
Regards,

This is a great thread!  
I love to use different techniques to get different sounds/feels out of the guitar.  I use this same (back of the fingernails) strumming technique for certain kinds of music and it works really well, almost better (or more expressive) than a flat pick.
 
A few years ago I'd seen a close up of Paul McCartney playing "Blackbird" on an acoustic guitar, and I noticed his picking hand ... he was using this same technique and he only used his thumb and index finger.   All these years I wondered how he got such an unusual picking groove in that song and it finally dawned on my that he was playing it much simpler than I thought.  He also uses the same kind of approach on the song "Mother Nature's Son", and it creates a similar groove. 
 
I saw Jeff Beck in concert a few years ago and I couldn't believe the variety of colors he would get out of a cranked-up Marshall and Strat, but then I noticed that he was playing with his fingers, this is where he gets so much of that expressive tone, by using his fingers to get just the right kind of attack out of those notes, muting, etc.  
 
--Jim 

There's one acoustic technique I've never been able to master for some reason and that's the rhythmic slap of such players as John Martyn and Nic Jones. 
 
For example John Martyn's "May You Never"
 

 
Or Nic Jones' "Canadee-I-O"
 

 
It's a very simple technique and I've seen so many people doing it but for some reason I JUST CANNOT!