Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: Ivan Bertolazzi
Specifically, Van Halen says it was watching Led Zeppelin play the Forum during the '70s where he first got the idea to start tapping. “I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his 'Heartbreaker' solo back in 1971,” Van Halen told Guitar World in 2008.
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For my fingers, the third movement of Moonlight is much harder than the third movement of Tempest. Moonlight demands an incredibly light, even, and...
Read More »If there is one guitar technique that Eddie Van Halen will forever be remembered for, it will be tapping. Although not exactly unknown before Eddie adopted it, with Genesis’ Steve Hackett notably employing the technique on ‘Dancing with the Moonlit Knight’, Van Halen revolutionised and popularised tapping for an entirely new generation of hard rock and heavy metal disciples. There remains some debate as to how Van Halen first took on tapping, and whether he had seen someone else do it before. In a 2009 interview, Dokken guitarist George Lynch claims that both he and Van Halen had seen Harvey Mandel utilise the tapping technique at a show in West Hollywood in the 1970s, at a club called Starwood. Hackett himself claims some credit for inspiring Van Halen, but Eddie has stated that he never saw Genesis perform live, much less heard Hackett’s version on the technique. Instead, Van Halen points to another legendary guitarist as his inspiration: Jimmy Page. Specifically, Van Halen says it was watching Led Zeppelin play the Forum during the ’70s where he first got the idea to start tapping. “I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his ‘Heartbreaker’ solo back in 1971,” Van Halen told Guitar World in 2008. “He was doing a pull-off to an open string, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, open string … pull off. I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around?’ I just kind of took it and ran with it.” According to Van Halen, it wasn’t Page originating the technique that became Van Halen’s signature. Rather, Van Halen saw Page playing around with a similar technique and later adapted it to his own style. In this version of the story, Van Halen is the originator of his own design. Tapping had certainly existed before Eddie Van Halen, but nobody was doing it in the way that Van Halen was. For someone who built his own guitar and learned music by ear, it only makes sense that Van Halen would teach himself tapping instead of culling it from someone else. Check out a 1973 performance of ‘Heartbreaker’ at Los Angeles’ The Forum and see if you can make the connection between Page’s solo and Van Halen’s eventual epiphany.
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The first major pop stars as such were the crooners of the 1930s and '40s. Bing Crosby sold millions of records, as did Frank Sinatra (arguably the...
Read More »Alex Lifeson is one of the most underrated guitarists of all time and a lot of that has to do with the style of music that Rush plays. Progressive rock doesn't exactly get a boatload of airplay on mainstream rock stations. But regardless of the genre, Lifeson's playing is some of the best in rock history.
First off, if you haven’t sat down and listened to the Verve’s Urban Hymns album, you haven’t lived. Nick McCabe’s guitar work on that album is so incredible, you almost don’t realize it’s happening. McCabe revolutionized what I would call “atmospheric guitar playing.” He added so much to songs by adding so little. But the little he played was always absolutely perfect. Take the Urban Hymns song “Lucky Man,” for example. There are dozens of layered guitar parts going on that help to accent Richard Ashcroft’s acoustic guitar strumming. These parts are just enough for you to notice they’re there, but they don’t take over the song. Even McCabe’s solo on the track seems like a bridge, rather than a solo break. It all helps to make the song flow. McCabe’s role in The Verve has always been as a side man, rather than a lead guitar player. Yes, he is the lead guitar player, but his playing helps to support the singer, rather than take over the track. His use of simplistic arpeggios and echo effects are exclusive to his tone. To this day, I have yet to hear another guitar player play the same thing that McCabe would play. McCabe is also known for being very meticulous about crafting guitar parts in the studio. So meticulous in fact, that several producers have claimed that he’s nearly impossible to work with; he never plays the same riff in the same way twice. Due to the Verve’s relative (and completely unwarranted) status as a one hit wonder, McCabe’s contribution to music has gone almost unnoticed to the general listener. But if you really sit down and listen to the music, you’ll see that Nick McCabe is arguably the world’s most underrated guitarist.
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Chopin has a reputation for being an exquisite miniaturist, but he was much more than that: his approach to playing and composing for the piano and...
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A quarter note is worth one beat, but when a tie symbol links two quarter notes, it effectively becomes a half beat. Nov 28, 2021
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