I've seen flamenco guitarists do tricks like this, and others equally spectacular. Most impressive, but actually, what it boils down to is a gimmick, not a style or technique. Flamenco guitarists won't build a whole piece around something like this. They'll toss in a short passage to wow the rubes, then go back to regular techniques. What it boils down to is that you can't play any real music with this sort of stuff.

It's nice to know a few little stunts like this and toss them in from time to time, but just remember, it's a bit like a poodle wearing a tutu and hopping around on its hind legs.

Let me put it this way:   once recently when my wife and I ate at a local bistro that occasionally offers entertainment, there was a "classical guitarist" there. Which is to say, he played a classic guitar and he did use classic technique. We arrived in time to hear a couple of pieces at the end of a set. I got to talking with him between sets, and I asked him what the last piece he played was. He told me he'd written it himself. In fact, he said proudly, all of the music he played, he wrote himself.

We heard him do a couple more sets, and it quickly became evident to me that, although technically what he did, he did well, his technique was very limited. There were a lot of fairly simple to intermediate pieces by Sor, Tarrega, Giuliani, Carulli, and others—that I give my guitar students early on—that he simply didn't have the necessary technique to play. So if he were going to perform in public, he had to compose music that he could play. He did bar chords well and he did about three arpeggio patterns. But I never heard him play a single scale-wise passage, not even as much as three or four notes. His pieces consisted of him running bar chords up and down the fingerboard while playing one of his three arpeggio patterns. If there was any kind of melodic line there, it was really hard to pick out. The sad result was that after you'd heard him play three or four pieces, they all started sounding alike. You'd heard everything he could do.

Some wise man once said, "Don't waste your time learning the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade!"

Don Firth