Guitar Tapping Tips And Techniques
By Brad Finley
Although made popular recently by Eddie VanHalen, guitar tapping or right hand ‘legatos’ is a technique players have been executing for years. Country players know the benefit of laying down a nice subtle lead and just putting in those quick hammers with clear guitar tapping. And while it’s not the easiest thing, guitar finger tapping techniques are really nothing much more then fast hammer on and a pull offs. Whether you use your middle finger or your first, most times you can hold the pick as usual to execute your guitar tapping and get the speed and positioning essential to good guitar tapping techniques. But like anything else, guitar tapping takes practice and patience.
Since this is a highly specialized, yet popular way of playing we hear a lot of player’s guitar tapping these days…and just as many tapping badly. Especially when a guitar is cranked through distortion, a whole host of extra noises will come out if the player’s guitar finger tapping techniques aren’t the cleanest. An important trick to ‘clean-up’ when you are cranked through that Marshall Stack and you’re in “overdrive”, is to rest the back of your right hand on the lower strings for muting; what you want to avoid is these string making a lot of extra noise while you get that guitar tapping in one steady movement. Of course, if you’re a rock player you are most likely already dreaming of the all-too flashy ‘cross-handed tapping’ but this is so impractical it only ever works when playing live (and even then it is a hard to get those guitar tapping progressions cooking in this way!) Admittedly though, this particular type of guitar tapping, above all other types of guitar finger tapping techniques, creates a truly distinct tone.
There are hundreds of videos and books that show guitar tapping tips, but as it is with everything else, you can’t even begin to understand how guitar tapping works until you get up and do it yourself. Although modern listeners have been conditioned to want speed like Eddie V., it is more important to get the strong and clear sound of each note then to sacrifice technique for potential sloppiness. Guitar finger tapping techniques are only good if you can do them; nothing sounds worse then reaching for a flashy technique and not being able to pull it off. As with everything else you learn on guitar, if you mater a technique on acoustic then you can feel all that more confident trying it on electric.
Playing a difficult and flashy exercise, such as guitar tapping or lightening fast arpeggios, sometimes seem to be easier on an electric; you get-off on the sound you are creating, the noise, but don’t catch nuisances or mistakes. Try tapping on an acoustic guitar (or you want a big challenge-try guitar tapping on an acoustic bass!) Guitar finger tapping is hard on an acoustic; cross-handed guitar tapping is almost impossible (it takes a ton of strength and precision), but master guitar tapping on an acoustic and you’ll find you are that much more prepared for what you might do on your electric.
Brad Finley is senior editor of MyGuitarWorkshop – Guitar Tips and Music Theory. Website provides guitar lessons and instructions for all level guitar players. Click for more Guitar Tips And Techniques
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Two-Handed Tapping
Tapping on a guitar (or bass) means tapping the fingers against the strings on the fretboard to make sounds. No striking, picking, plucking, or strumming is employed. Usually this means two-handed tapping, meaning to use the technique with both hands.
Two handed tapping is sometimes called ‘touchstyle,’ or ‘touch style,’ because the action of sounding the note feels more like touching than thumping the string. This is done on an amplified instrument to make the notes audible. Because it can be done with both hands, both hands can be used at the same time, like a piano player in a way.
It can be used to play polyphonic and counterpoint music on a guitar or one of the several specialty instruments designed especially for this technique. It can be used to play left-hand chords and right hand melodies much like ‘cocktail piano.’
It can be used to play basslines with simultaneous rhythmic chords. It can be used to play baroque music, and two-part songs as given in piano scores, and as exemplified in Bach’s Two-Part Inventions. And that’s not all …
How to Reduce or Eliminate Hum
Generally speaking, there is nothing in a guitar that actually generates hum, generally you can assume that the hum is being induced into the guitar, or it is being added to the signal of the guitar.
Experimentation is your friend. Here are some possibilities –
RECEIVING BROADCAST HUM
There is something in the environment which is “broadcasting” RFI in the room where your equipment is located. Common sources of Radio Frequency Interference include motors (vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and automobile distributors), and transformers (high-intensity lamps, fluorescent lights), and from big magnets like speaker coils or television sets. The sound from autos are likely to vary in frequency. The sound from lamps and lights and refrigerators are likely to be be consistent, and at 60 cycles per second, which is what we normally call ‘hum.’
The RFI can be picked up either by strings (antennas) or by pickups (coils) as the signal is induced into the circuit created by the guitar and its parts, or into the cord (usually not possible if cord is properly shielded on both the guitar and the amp end), or into the amp, and then …
Tapping on Bass: Six Strings? Eight Strings? Twelve Strings?
If you’re a bass player, I’d bet you’d agree that the power and precision of the bass is that it can play a single, low note.
You can play fast or slow, but learning bass technique initially is learning to play one note at a time. If you experiment with playing chords, you’ve learned that you must spread the notes out, because close-voiced notes sound muddy.
BASS PLAYERS BEGIN TAPPING ON BASS
With modern amplification, more and more bass-players are learning bass tapping – that is, just touching the strings to the frets, in order to sound a note. This touchstyle method allows playing the bass strings with both hands, because plucking is not needed.
And tapping on bass opens the door to chordal bass music, and to playing melodies. With two-handed tapping on bass you can be a better side-man, but you could also begin playing solo gigs, and it’s not all that difficult, with the Easy Touchstyle Method. At the end, I’ll tell you how to get a free bass-tapping method book that reveals how easy it can be.
Obviously, to play spread-out chords, and to play high-pitched melodies, you’re going to need more than a four-string bass, because you’re going to need more range.
So here’s the question –