Flat pick and fingers combined?

[Bushleague]

I'm mostly a picker, but dabble in fingerstyle a little, I've tried combining the two in the past and frankly it just felt weird. Been watching Tommy Emanuel lately though and I decided to put in an honest effort, this evening I made some real progress. With a little more practice I can see this being a really efficient way for me to play some interesting lead lines whilst keeping my pick handy for strumming and what not, so any tips for me as I start working on this?

So far I'm gravitating to using my ring finger any time I pluck the high E, or whenever I pluck a few strings away from the pick, leaving my middle finger ready if I need to pluck something in between. Not sure if this is the textbook method or not. Too, I cant really have nails in my line of work and am having some trouble keeping the volume ballanced at times, not sure if that can really be helped without plugging in and useing some compression.

[Gordon Currie]

I don't think the 'textbook' has been written on this yet

I tend to lead with my middle finger, but if you can make it work with the ring finger, go for it.

It takes a lot of practice to even out volume between picked notes and plucked notes.

[Bushleague]

Originally Posted by Gordon Currie

I don't think the 'textbook' has been written on this yet

I tend to lead with my middle finger, but if you can make it work with the ring finger, go for it.

It takes a lot of practice to even out volume between picked notes and plucked notes.

Alot of the stuff I'm doing invovles using the pick and a hammer on on a lower string, and then plucking a higher string to get a very fast low efort tripplet. To me the rhythms feel alot like playing slap bass. I started off using my middle finger but found there were times when I'd have middle finger tied up and want to pluck a string "on the way back to the pick" so thus leading with the ring finger.

Sort of seems like I could potentially be making things awkward for myself in regards to playing arpegios or plucking 3 note chords if I get too much into that habit?

After playing my fingers sore last night (well, mostly just my ring finger) it seems like playing well out over the soundhole is helping with the volume differential, but it sure feels like plucking real hard like this is going to require building up some right hand finger-callouses.