>that's the fingerpicking the hard way.
Not to me... if I want to play strict fingerstyle, I use nothing but fingers. But many times in a not-so-quiet environment, I find the fingers are loud enough but old "P" (does that stand for Phumb?) is dull-sounding. I never liked the feel of a thumb pick -- feels unstable to me -- so I got into the habit of flat-picking with thumb and forefinger holding the plectrum and the other three free-picking just to get a little more volume out of the guitar. If I needed even more I could go to cross-picking.
The other thing I like about it is that you can switch from fingerstyle to flat-picking for a solo with no fuss.
But now that I am usually playing amplified I am gravitating more and more to a pure fingerstyle technique.
-Glenn