| Today's
lesson covers one of my favorite techniques, finger tapping.
This technique was first made popular by Eddie Van Halen
and became a big part of his early sound. Those of you
who are familiar with finger tapping already know how
difficult it can be. First, you must coordinate both hands
while trying to hold onto the pick. Then you have to decide
which fingers to use for tapping. When you finally get
all of this together there's often so much string noise
that the lick sounds like a mess! This lesson has three
playing examples with tablature and sound files.
The hardest part about this technique is not the actual
tapping itself, but being able to control all the potential
string noise that can occur. That is why it is crucial
to work on this very slowly, gradually building speed.
While this is true for most cool techniques, it is imperative
for finger tapping. Keeping this in mind, let's move
on to the first example.
Example 1:
This lick is a great tapping exercise. It starts in
A pentatonic minor and ends in A Dorian (at the 32nd
notes). I recommend to use the middle finger for tapping.
This enables you to hold the pick as usual so that eventually
you can combine picking and tapping as will be demonstrated
in example 3. The effects that I used on this are digital
delay and a little bit of chorus. To avoid string noise
use your right hand palm to mute the strings as you
tap.
Example 2:
This example takes the whole idea a little farther.
I'm tapping with both my second and third fingers on
my right hand. The benefits of doing this are huge.
For starters, you will end up moving your right hand
around a lot less, substantially reducing the amount
of string noise that will occur. Also, you will be able
to go a lot faster because you will not be jumping around
so much. Last, but not least, it looks much cooler.
This lick is in A major (or F# minor). Basically what
I did to build this lick was hold down one arpeggio
shape while I tapped another arpeggio shape on top of
it. It kind of has a "mirror" effect. This time I used
digital delay but no chorus.
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