How to do apoyando in Romance de Amor?

Question

I am trying to play Romance de Amor, sometimes attributed to Vincente Gomez.

I have heard someone recommend using apoyando (rest stroke) for playing the melody (on first string) - since the beginning is very easy, it's a good piece to practice apoyando.

My question is - which fingering would be best for that? I have only used apoyando with the thumb ('p' finger), so anything else seems equally alien to me.

Just to show what I am talking about, I tried the following:

• pami - could be convenient, because it uses the "traditional assignment" of each finger to its string (i=3, m=2, a=3)
• paai or paam - after doing the apoyando, the ring finger lands on the second string; might as well use it while it's there
• pmmi - the same, but not using the ring finger

I have looked at various performances on youtube, and they invariably use the pami fingering, but, as far as I can tell, they don't use apoyando.

Answer 1

Never tried that with the Romance, but now I'm learning to play Tarrega's etude in Em (a tube link) which has a similar stroke pattern with apoyando on the first string. My teacher says I definitely should use pami for it. He admits it's a bit tricky at first, but says the pattern can be learned with a little practice. Don't see why this would not apply to the Romance as well.

Answer 2

I usually play this piece with pami and that's the way I learned it. But recently when I'm trying to get a nice tone out the melody and trying to add apoyando, I've discovered that my fingers actually want to play it pmip or pamp. It seems to vary depending upon which of my two fingers m or a has a smoother fingernail (and thus, a sweeter tone). I'm the first to admit that this forces a weird jump for the thumb, which makes the chord changes trickier to accomplish (both hands changing positions at the same time). But it doesn't appear to adversely affect the sound. A little hesitation at the ends of the measures seems to help support the uneven 3/4 time (or 9/8 depending on whether you take the arpeggios as triplets or as a compound subdivision).

I'm surprised that I never considered your paai etc. idea to combine the apoyando with a sweep. This is something I may have to play around with. If it were combined with my thumb-heavy idea, the piece could be played with just two fingers. That may make it still easier to focus on the tone of the melody notes, while simultaneously making the timing more difficult. :/ If you're getting this fancy with the piece, then it may be interesting to try a triple sweep piii.