So you want to burn up the fret board like Edward Van Halen or whoever your guitar hero may be? It's a great technique to have and it's always an attention grabber for those that have never seen it before! It's one of my favorite things to improvise a blazing solo when I'm gigging.
Everything just comes out in those few seconds almost as if the guitar is about to catch fire.
I'm sure you'll agree that any solo isn't complete without some tapping of course! When Edward Van Halen first invented tapping, nobody in the world had ever seen or heard anything like it before! You've probably heard the stories about when Van Halen were first gigging in bars and clubs.
Eddie would turn his back to the crowd while tapping so nobody would know how he was doing it! Nowadays it's common knowledge and I personally love it when people see me using both hands on the fret board like that! In any guitar lesson, tapping has to be the bit that students love the most.
So what is the best way to improve your tapping? Once you know how it's done, the important thing to remember is that you need to practice slowly.
It's all about keeping a good slow rhythm and making clean contact with the strings.
If you try and go to fast when you are learning how to tap, you will become a sloppy tapper and once you've picked up that bad habit, it's impossible to break.
Keep a nice slow rhythm and then gradually start moving your hands up and down the fret boards while keeping the same pattern.