Tapping Applications Lesson 1

Rock Fusion Lesson, by Conrad Harpham

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			EXERCISE LESSON.
			First in a series of 5 lessons on tapping, with varying levels of difficulty, starting with intermediate/advanced. This lesson will help you apply different tapping techniques into your playing. We will be looking at areas including crossing strings, string skipping, arpegiating chords, playing fast scales and eventually onto some multi-finger tapping examples.		
Tags : 
			tapping, rhodes, van halen, satriani, vai		

Lesson number one includes some regular tapping techniques, used by many players, started by the likes of Van Halen and Randy Rhodes, among others. Played over a funky 4/4 backing. I am playing mostly 8th note triplets, at a tempo of 120 BPM. 20 or so years ago, this lick would have been considered an advanced tapping lick. The technique has developed so far in that time however, that it would now be considered as fairly standard for the modern day rock player.
Musically, the key of the lick does not deviate from Em, so you can can pretty much concentrate on solidifying the tapping technique ready to be used in harder examples in the next few lessons.

Areas of potential difficulty to watch out for in this exercise are in bar 7, when the lick transcends over the strings, and in bar 11 where I throw in a descending "Vai ism".

As with all exercises,take it slowly at first building accuracy, then gradually speed up to the relevant tempo. I played this exercise with my Framus Diablo custom guitar on the bridge pickup setting, through the high gain channel of a line 6 flextone amp. I also used a string mute (hairband! - not my own you understand...) just above the nut to negate unwanted string noise.

Good luck with it!
E Minor
 