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 …