Six Strings
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Course

Advanced · step 4 · Not started · Electric guitar only

Tapping

What if your picking hand came to play on the neck? Tapping extends legato: a picking-hand finger strikes a high note, then the fretting hand takes over. Goal: a steady tapping loop, on one string, with a metronome.

This lesson is for electric guitar: it doesn’t count in your acoustic course, but you can still read it.

Time
10 minutes a day for a few weeks
Before you start
Legato
You’ll be able to
Play a steady tapping loop

The motion

  1. The tap: the middle finger of your picking hand (or the index, with the pick tucked into your palm) strikes the B string at the 12th fret, like a hammer-on.
  2. The pull-off: the same finger pulls the string downward as it leaves, sounding the note your fretting hand holds at the 5th fret.
  3. The hammer-on: your fretting hand strikes the 8th fret.
  4. And start again. Three notes per cycle: 12, 5, 8, that is B, E, G: the notes of E minor.
e|----------------------------------------------------------|
B|-12p5-5h8-12p5-5h8-12p5-5h8-12p5-5h8-13p5-5h8-13p5-5h8-12-|
G|----------------------------------------------------------|
D|----------------------------------------------------------|
A|----------------------------------------------------------|
E|----------------------------------------------------------|

In the tab, “12p5” means: your picking hand taps the 12th fret and pulls off to the 5th. At the end, the tap moves up one fret (13, C): C, E, G, the chord changes and becomes C major.

The sound

A little distortion helps: the notes sustain better. Mute the low strings with the edge of your picking hand, and the high strings with your fretting hand. Tapping gets noisy if a neighboring string starts to ring.

Variations

  • Change the tapped note: 12, then 13, then 15 (B, C, D). Three notes, three colors, over the same loop.
  • Change strings: on the high E string, tap the 12th fret and play 7 and 10 with your fretting hand: E, B, D.
  • Back yourself up with the looper: an Am loop, then tapping on top.

You’ve got it when…