<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Everybody knows Eddie Van Halen invented a two hand guitar technique widely known as \u2018tapping\u2019.\u00a0 All one has to do is call up a video of Eddie shredding the neck of one of his iconic guitars and it is likely he will employ tapping in a solo.\u00a0 What is tapping exactly?\u00a0 According to Gunnar Lawson\u2019s description on the <\/span>Instrumental Guys <\/span><\/i>webpage, \u201cTapping is no doubt one of the coolest guitar-playing techniques.\u00a0 It\u2019s also one of the most difficult and misunderstood.\u00a0 It involves playing the guitar like a piano.\u00a0 You heard that right.\u00a0 In other words, it uses both your picking and fretting hands to tap notes all over the fretboard.\u00a0 Usually, guitarists play the guitar with a pick or pluck with their fingers.\u00a0 On the other hand, the tapping technique involves tapping the strings so they vibrate and ring out.\u00a0 Some players tap with one hand while others use both.\u00a0 A perfect guitar tap, however, involves using both hands as the other hand is used to pull-off and hammer on the strings on the neck.\u201d\u00a0 Just like Michael Jackson doing the dance step called the moonwalk, Eddie was so good at it, he <\/span>had <\/span><\/i>to have invented tapping –\u00a0 right?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Drummers who dabble in guitar don\u2019t necessarily pay that much attention to guitar technique, but there are things I remember seeing guitarists do that made me think, \u201cOkay, that was neat.\u201d\u00a0 Ron Koss from Savage Grace was the first guitarist I ever saw coax a violin sound from his Les Paul.\u00a0 Ron would pick a note with the volume off and then use the little finger of his picking hand to turn the volume up and down, creating a cool violin like tone (and no, he did not use a violin bow ala Jimmy Page).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When BTO invaded Hedgecock Fieldhouse at NMU, Blair Thornton employed a trick during a solo that was more for visual effect.\u00a0 It was a form of tapping, I suppose, just not a really\u00a0 complicated method.\u00a0 Blair struck a note and then did a Pete Townshend windmill with his picking arm, only in super slow motion.\u00a0 Townshend really cranked his arm when doing his trademark windmill power strokes, but Thornton slowly rotated his arm and used his index finger to fret a higher note on the guitar neck than the one he had left ringing.\u00a0 It was a simple guitar effect but the crowd ate it up anyway.\u00a0 If this was an \u2018A-B-C\u2019 level of tapping, the things that Eddie did would have been post PhD level.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As for who gets credit for being the first guitarist to employ tapping, the answer depends on who you ask.\u00a0 Most guitar players who use the technique will tell us where they picked up the idea, but that leads to a tree with many branches.\u00a0 Finding the main trunk of that tree, the first guitarist to actually use tapping, is a little harder.\u00a0 How about we consult a guitarist who not only toured with Van Halen back in the day, but is also a guitarist who wrote a book about the technique.\u00a0 His name is Steve Lynch, formerly of the band Autograph.\u00a0 Lynch was interviewed in the February 2024 issue of <\/span>Guitar World <\/span><\/i>and he had some interesting things to tell writer Andrew Daly on the subject.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Back in 1984, Autograph had a smash hit with their <\/span>Sign In Please <\/span><\/i>album and its monster hit <\/span>Turn Up the Radio.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>They moved a lot of copies with it in heavy rotation on MTV.\u00a0 On the strength of this record, Autograph found themselves opening for another hot new band, Van Halen.\u00a0 Lynch was already 30 years old and had been around the block a few times in the music industry, but what happened next suprised him.\u00a0 As he told Daly, \u201cWhen our tour with Van Halen started, I was asked by their management, \u2018Are you Steve Lynch, the one who wrote <\/span>\u2018The Right Touch\u2019 <\/span><\/i>[A 1982 instructional book with the full title \u2018<\/span>The Right Touch:\u00a0 The Art of Hammering Notes with the Right Hand\u2019]?\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>I said, \u2018Yes, I am.\u2019\u00a0 I was then aggressively informed, \u2018That\u2019s Eddie\u2019s technique;\u00a0 you\u2019re not allowed to play it on the tour – or else!\u2019\u00a0 I was PO\u2019ed that I couldn\u2019t play something I had created.\u00a0 So later on, I confronted Eddie about it, to which he replied, \u2018I had no idea they put those restrictions on you,\u00a0 I\u2019ll call the dogs off.\u2019\u00a0 I graciously thanked him and played whatever I wanted for the rest of the tour.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never know it he was telling the truth, but I don\u2019t care;\u00a0 we hit it off well after that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As far as how he was originally introduced to the guitar, Lynch told Daly, \u201cThe spark was lit when the Beatles played on Ed Sullivan\u2019s show in 1964. \u00a0 My older sister had some of her cute girlfriends over to watch, and when I saw their reaction to the performance, I thought, \u2018That\u2019s what I want to do!\u2019\u201d\u00a0 He started off with a particle board acoustic guitar from Sears & Roebuck with strings so high off the fretboard, \u201dyou had to almost stand on them to make a note come out\u201d.\u00a0 Steve kept at it, adding, \u201cMy style evolved when I stopped listening to other guitarists and started listening to jazz, which guided me in an obscure direction. \u00a0 But when Autograph formed, I had to abandon my progressive side for a more commercially accepted style.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t bother me much, though\u2026 I had to pay the rent somehow [laughs].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lynch developed a two handed tapping technique after seeing Harvey Mandel \u2018playing around with it at a soundcheck at a club in downtown Seattle in the early Seventies\u2019:\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s what first inspired me.\u201d\u00a0 He pursued the idea more after seeing another local artist named Steve Buffington experimenting with tapping.\u00a0 He gives the most credit to Emmett Chapman after seeing him do a clinic at the Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT, now the Musicians Institute).<\/span><\/p>\n Lynch continued:\u00a0 \u201cI was awestruck by the sounds he created.\u00a0 I immediately began to train my hand and began writing the two-hand theory, including arpeggios, triads, chord inversions, scales, intervals, and double-stops.\u201d\u00a0 Chapman invented the \u2018Chapman Stick\u2019 as a result of his experiments with tapping.\u00a0 Lynch would take the experience into print with <\/span>The Right Touch <\/span><\/i>in 1982.\u00a0 Knowing he had been immersed in tapping long before touring with Van Halen in 1984, he had every right to be miffed when he was accused of using \u2018Eddie\u2019s technique\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Eddie Van Halen always credited the idea to start tapping from seeing Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmie Page in 1971.\u00a0 During the solo for <\/span>Heartbreaker, <\/span><\/i>Eddie noticed Page was doing a pull-off from a fretted note to an open string.\u00a0 Eddie said to himself, \u201cI can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around?\u00a0 I just moved the nut.\u201d\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take long before he was experimenting with using both hands to tap notes on the fretboard.\u00a0 This was a natural progression because Van Halen\u2019s earliest training had been on piano.\u00a0 Again, just for the record, Eddie did not invent tapping, he just took it up several levels from what had been done by others.\u00a0 With MTV bringing what he was doing to a much wider audience that the previously mentioned artists could reach playing in clubs, it lit the music world on fire.\u00a0 It also may have convinced many guitar players to quit (I am kidding), but more than likely it sent other players to the woodshed to copy what they saw Eddie doing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George Lynch (guitarist from Dokken and no relation to Steve) also saw Harvey Mandel utilize tapping at a show at the Starwood Club in West Hollywood in the 1970s.\u00a0 In fact, George says both he and Eddie had seen and been inspired by Mandel.\u00a0 Steve Hacket from Genesis was also using a tapping technique on the song <\/span>Dancing with the Moonlit Knight<\/span><\/i> and claimed he had been Van Halen\u2019s inspiration.\u00a0 Eddie disputed this because he had never seen Genesis play live nor had he heard Hackett\u2019s take on tapping.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If we dig a little deeper into the Wikipedia universe, we can find many roots to the trunk of the guitar tapping tree.\u00a0 Some go back much farther than one would think.\u00a0 For example, Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840) used similar techniques on the violin.\u00a0 Though most remember Paganini as a virtuoso on that instrument, he actually considered himself a better guitarist than violinist.\u00a0 He wrote compositions for guitar (<\/span>Grand Sonata for Violin and Guitar <\/span><\/i>as one example) and some musicologists think he wrote many of his 37 violin sonatas on guitar before transcribing them for violin.\u00a0 Paganini said he enjoyed playing his guitar in taverns more than performing in concert halls.\u00a0 Frequenting such establishments (the taverns, that is), he was no doubt exposed to Romani \u2018gypsies\u2019 who used similar tapping techniques on guitar, as did Turkish musicians who played folk music on a stringed instrument called the \u2018baglama\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There are filmed and recorded examples of tapping on various stringed instruments, including the banjo, from the early years of the 20th century.\u00a0 One notable practitioner was Roy Smeck who was seen tapping on a ukulele in the 1932 film <\/span>Club House Party.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>To demonstrate the sensitivity of his electric guitar pickups, famed designer Harry DeArmond developed his own two-handed tapping style.\u00a0 DeArmond\u2019s friend Jimmie Webster was a demonstrator for the Gretsch guitar brand.\u00a0 Webster made recordings using DeArmond\u2019s technique.\u00a0 Jimmie went on to describe the technique in an instructional book <\/span>Touch Method for Electric and Amplified Spanish Guitar <\/span><\/i>(1952).\u00a0 Tapping wasn\u2019t employed by guitarists exclusively on this side of the Atlantic.\u00a0 Vittorio Camardese developed his own version in the early 1960s which he displayed on an Italian TV show in 1965.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Jazz artists were not immune to the lure of tapping with many employing it in the 1950s and 1960s.\u00a0 Barney Kessel was one of them and he became an early supporter of Emmette Chapman.\u00a0 As previously mentioned, Chapman developed his \u2018Electric Stick\u2019 (later to be called either \u2018the Stick\u2019 or the \u2018Chapman Stick\u2019) in August of 1969.\u00a0 The 9-string Stick was a long-scale guitar he invented to accommodate his new way of tapping the strings from opposite sides of the neck.\u00a0 Chapman called this the \u2018Free Hands\u2019 method and utilizing it allowed him to explore \u2018complete counterpoint capability\u2019.\u00a0 Both Steve Lynch and Jennifer Batten were influenced by Chapman.\u00a0 Jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan is a modern day artist who relies extensively on tapping.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Harvey Mandel\u2019s name is one recurring touch-point for rock and blues players from the last fifty years.\u00a0 Mandel\u2019s playing with Canned Heat was also mentioned by Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple who said he saw him tapping on stage at the Whisky a Go Go as early as 1968.\u00a0 Mandel began his recording career with blues harmonica icon Charlie Musselwhite in 1966 (<\/span>Stand Back!\u00a0 Here Comes Charley Musselwhite\u2019s Southside Band<\/span><\/i>).\u00a0 Mandel later joined Canned Heat in the middle of a gig at the Fillmore West when he happened to be in the dressing room when Henry Vestine quit the band.\u00a0 The set Canned Heat did at the original Woodstock Festival was only his third gig with the band.\u00a0 Later, Mandel and Canned Heat bassist Larry Taylor joined John Mayall\u2019s band where he stayed for two years.\u00a0 There is no doubt a lot of guitarists were introduced to the idea of tapping with Mandel performing some pretty high profile gigs in that time period.\u00a0 He also has had a prolific solo career releasing 28 albums from 1968\u2019s <\/span>Cristo Redentor <\/span><\/i>through 2022\u2019s <\/span>Who\u2019s Calling.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another noted musician who helped popularize tapping was avant garde guitarist Frank Zappa.\u00a0 It is little wonder Steve Vai has become one of the top tier tappers after having come to the forefront of the guitar world playing in Zappa\u2019s band.\u00a0 Vai would later mentor Zappa\u2019s son Dweezle who has become a guitar player\u2019s player with his own set of over the top tapping skills. Back when <\/span>Guitar Player<\/span><\/i> magazine still came with those thin plastic demo records inside, I heard Frank introduce a live track recorded at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles saying, \u201cLadies and gentlemen, my son Dweezle\u2026the Dweez\u201d during a 1984 concert when he would have been all of fifteen years-old.\u00a0 \u201cDweezle is going to play the guitar solo on a song from the <\/span>Them or Us <\/span><\/i>album called <\/span>Sharleena,\u201d <\/span><\/i>Frank told the cheering crowd before he ripped off an amazing solo (replete with a flurry of tapping).\u00a0 Paul Gilbert (Racer X, Mr. Big),\u00a0 Buckhead (nee:\u00a0 Brian Patrick Carroll), and Reb Beach (Winger, Whitesnake) are also contemporary guitarists who do amazing things with tapping.\u00a0 A quick internet search will provide one with plenty of examples of how tapping has evolved in the last twenty years.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0While researching this topic, I found an interesting little sidebar concerning Eddie and Jennifer Batten.\u00a0 Eddie had been asked to do a solo on Michael Jackson\u2019s hit single <\/span>Beat It.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Eddie listened to the playback and suggested a few chord changes to make it more interesting and easier to solo over.\u00a0 The record sales kind of proved that the King of Pop was not one to turn down good advice from other musicians.\u00a0 When Jennifer Batten became Jackson\u2019s touring guitarist, she had to employ all her skills to cover Eddie\u2019s now iconic guitar parts.\u00a0 She did the song justice and said the only time it made her nervous was when she had to play it for Eddie.\u00a0 Van Halen was in an adjacent studio when MJ\u2019s band was rehearsing so he stopped by and asked Batten to play the solo.\u00a0 Surprisingly, he then asked her to teach it to him because he had forgotten what he had recorded.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Batten compiled but said the thing that made her job more difficult was the tempo.\u00a0 Jackson performed the song much faster live than he had on the record.\u00a0 There is a live clip out there from 1984 that is worth taking a look at.\u00a0 Eddie is guesting with MJ\u2019s band and he manages to pull off the solo (replete with tapping) live, but in the beginning, you can see him smiling and commenting to the other guitarist.\u00a0 You can almost read his lips as he arches his eyebrows and says something about the speed.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Steve Lynch added one more interesting item about incorporating tapping in his solos:\u00a0 \u201cI would never have been able to create the solos I did without my knowledge of theory.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never created a solo with a guitar in my hands.\u201d\u00a0 Lynch is currently working on a solo effort he calls Blue Neptune.\u00a0 He describes it as a \u2018modern day <\/span>Dark Side of the Moon<\/span><\/i> which happens to be one of my favorite albums.\u201d\u00a0 I imagine we will hear more tapping from Lynch in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Eddie used ‘Eruption’ as a practice\/warm up . . . until the producer working on the first Van Halen album heard it . . . the rest would soon rock the whole guitar playing universe!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Everybody knows Eddie Van Halen invented a two hand guitar technique widely known as \u2018tapping\u2019.\u00a0 All one has to do is call up a video of Eddie shredding the neck of one of his iconic guitars and it is likely he will employ tapping in a solo.\u00a0 What is tapping exactly?\u00a0 According to Gunnar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-new-music","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3121,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions\/3121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}