Tapping
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- This article is about the music technique. For other uses, see Tapping (disambiguation)
Tapping is a playing technique (generally associated with electric guitar playing, though the technique can be performed on any string instrument) executed by using the fingers of the picking hand to tap the fingerboard, sounding notes. Tapping (also known as a two-hand hammer-on), performed in conjunction with normal fingering by the fret hand, facilitates the construction of note intervals that would otherwise be impossible using the fretting hand alone.
Perhaps the most famous employment of tapping is the short piece "Eruption" on the first Van Halen album, which features very fast tapping runs and formed the blueprint of heavy metal lead playing throughout the 1980s. While Eddie Van Halen is generally attributed with "inventing" tapping, the technique has in fact existed in some form or another for many centuries: Paganini utilized similar techniques on violin. Credit for the first application of this classical technique to popular music may more accurately be given to Steve Hackett of Genesis who used the technique both live and on recordings in the early 1970's.
A related technique is "tapped harmonics", where the fret hand acts as a barre, while the harmonic is tapped. Eddie van Halen also used this technique in the acoustic guitar solo "Spanish Fly".
One technique related to tapping is the "touch guitar" technique used by Stanley Jordan, where the pick hand is used to play lead while rhythm is simultaneously played with the usual fret hand.
The Chapman Stick is an instrument built exclusively for tapping.
An earlier recorded example before Van Halen is on Orchestra Luna's only album Orchestra Luna, on the outro to "Doris Dreams". Randy Roos is the guitar player.
External links
- Starting touch guitar, by Stanley Jordan (http://www.stanleyjordan.com/Technique/starting.html)