Tapping Guitar

As you surf through YouTube you have probably seen guitarists tapping guitar and wondered if you could learn to play like that. The sound you get from tapping guitar playing adds some variety and excitement to your range of techniques. You can use the first or second finger of your left hand to tap the fretboard  at the fret your note is at instead of fretting the note and striking the string with your pick.

The basic technique is not difficult to pick up but if you decide to make start on your tapping guitar style, be prepared to put alot of practice time in. For many guitar players learning guitar tapping well takes around six months, so do not be sad if you cannot get it right away.

If you are interested in learning guitar tapping, buy or borrow CDs and watch YouTube clips of these guitar players: Stanley Jordan, Zack Kim, Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen, Buckethead, Tom Morello, Yngwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci and Paul Gilbert. Some Metallica songs that feature tapping are Ride The Lightning, Blackened, ...And Justice For All, One, The Frayed Ends Of Sanity, To Live Is To Die, Wherever I May Roam and Am I Evil. If you are a beginner guitarist or even at the intermediate stage, you might find that finger tapping is very difficult. This is because it is a whole new skill apart from playing guitar in the normal way.

Tapping guitars is a technique that alot of guitarists are inspired to try by watching guitar virtuosos like Van Halen or Steve Vai. While there is nothing wrong with getting enthusiasm about tapping from a role model remember that no matter how far you go with the guitar it is always best to be yourself. You can only emulate your idols, you cannot BE them.

One way to make use of the songs that have already been recorded is to download Guitar Pro or Powertab do a search for tabs for guitar tapping songs in those formats. The PowerTab trial version and Guitar Pro (free) do not have realistic sound but you can get the notes off the tab and slow the MIDI down to get a handle on how to do the tapping, so they are not totally useless.

When you first try guitar tapping you will want to set the gain on your amp really high. As high as you can handle. In fact better get a pedal so you can lower it again for parts of the music where you are not tapping. If you do not have a top of the range guitar with nice pickups, do your guitar tapping slow so you can hear what you are doing, but keep the beat regular.

As a first attempt at guitar tapping Eruption by Van Halen is not a bad choice. Eddie Van Halen uses three finger tapping which you can pick up by practicing. Hot For Teacher is another Van Halen song you could try. The intro has some nice tapping on the guitar. Just go through any Van Halen CDs to see if there is any tapping you want to try to imitate.