Indeed, you don’t have to talk to too many guitarists before you’ll hear the view expressed that there is actually something pretty uncool about being able to read music – almost as if gaining this particular skill will somehow strip you of your ability to play spontaneously or with feeling.

Yet, if you ask anyone who has taken up guitar after having cut their teeth on a different instrument; one that is usually taught using standard notation; then I guarantee you will never hear them complain that understanding standard notation is any kind of disadvantage when it comes to learning to play guitar.

There are of course several notable examples of truly great musicians who never learnt to read – the incomparable Django Reinhardt being, to my mind, the best of these. But there are also many great rock guitarists who were classically trained and most definitely can read music: Brian May of Queen being the first one who comes to mind.

What we may never know is: – could Django Reinhardt have been somehow even greater if he had learnt to read and write music? Or, would Brian May have played even better had he never learnt to read music?

Let’s get away from these imponderable questions a moment and also away from the sphere of the immortals and concentrate on the more familiar world of your average guitar player trying to improve their playing skills and their understanding of music.

In this world, I believe there is a better question to ask: When does it make sense to invest the necessary effort to learn to read and understand standard notation?

From my experience as a guitar teacher I would immediately say that the answer is different for each individual, depending on a variety of factors that I think are worth outlining. For beginners, I have to say there are only two circumstances where I have found it useful to introduce the reading of standard notation from day one:

• For some very young students (age 6 – 8) who have a leaning towards playing melody as      opposed to strumming chords
• Anyone wanting to learn classical guitar

I have to say that, for all other students (those with a preference for Blues, Rock, Country and even Jazz guitar) I have found only a disadvantage in introducing the learning of standard notation in the first year or so of their learning. However, it should be noted that other guitar teachers may have very differing views on this, largely depending, I think, on how they themselves learnt to play guitar.

For more advanced students the early introduction of standard notation is I think, definitely appropriate if they come for lessons with one or more of the following specific goals in mind:

• To play guitar in a big band or orchestra
• To pursue a career in mainstream music, particularly as a session musician
• To help with passing music exams
• To gain entry to a mainstream music course
• To be able to write parts for other instruments (saxophone, trumpet, keyboards, for example) in their band

But for most guitarists, I personally believe in a more gradual approach to coming to terms with the various ways of understanding music. I believe that to progress through the various stages of learning guitar in a way that is in itself, both rewarding and genuinely educational, I suggest the following path.

First, by being shown that there is nothing better than being able to physically see another, more experienced guitarist, hold down a chord shape or play a simple melodic or lead guitar phrase.

Next, by learning to understand grid-type chord diagrams. Most of us (but, I should stress, not all of us) think of chords as shapes, and grid diagrams are a great way to represent chords in this way. For those that don’t think in shapes, the various methods of showing chord grips numerically are well worth exploring. ‘X02220’ for an A major chord for example.

Then, I advocate learning to read basic guitar tab. By basic, I mean the style of guitar tab that doesn’t give you time values for notes – just fret numbers on strings. With the rapid rise in popularity of tab sites on the Internet, gaining confidence in reading tab is an essential step towards being able to access music in written form.

If you find yourself mystified by tab then don’t panic, you are not alone! Here is a short video lesson designed just for you:

How to Read Guitar Tab:

I think it is fair to say that, for a great many guitar players, this is as far as they feel they need to take the process of learning to read music. After all, what more is required? There are hundreds of publications, web sites and iphone apps that will produce grid diagrams for every chord under the sun. There are tabs available, both online and in book form, for practically every guitar solo or rhythm part ever recorded.

So what, if anything, is wrong with playing guitar from tabs and rhythm charts alone? The answer is that by restricting yourself to reading music in this way, you are limiting the growth of your understanding of music.  You are literally just following instructions. This may still result in your playing perfect sounding copies of other people’s music and if that is what you enjoy about playing guitar then personally, I think it’s fine to stop right there.

My teaching experience tells me though that it doesn’t matter whether you learn one piece of music from tab, or two hundred – because you are relying on someone else’s instructions you will never scratch below the surface and gain any real insight into what notes you are playing, nor why those notes work over those particular chords.

But now we come to the crunch. I think the heart of the issue lies in how you answer the following question:

What kind of guitarist do you want to be? 

We’ll go on to explore some of the answers to this question in “Part Two” and then look at how your own answer might determine when, if ever, you may best be advised to bite the bullet and expand your ability to read music to include standard notation.

Happy Playing!

Nick Minnion

Lots more lessons, articles and videos by Nick available at his main websites:

For guitar players: www.secretguitarteacher.com

For guitar teachers (or aspiring guitar teachers): www.teachguitar.com

To Read or Not to Read? Part 1 – The Tyranny of Tablature was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Easier said than done though isn’t it? Don’t worry! There are many guitar players who fall into a rather frustrating gap between learning their scale patterns and finding themselves spontaneously able to play great-sounding blues solos!

Guitar teachers often find that they have to devote a considerable amount of lesson time to helping their students bridge this gap. I think  there are actually several elements that need to be in place before this gap is successfully spanned and, although the mix of these elements will vary from student to student, I would list the following as being typical:

• Confidence to enter wholeheartedly into the ‘trial and error’ process that improvising necessarily entails.
• Development of good left/right hand coordination
• Mastery of basic technique (bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, vibrato etc…)
• A ’library’ of well-rehearsed licks (both original and er…borrowed!)
• An understanding of typical blues phrasing patterns (‘call and response’ or ‘question and answer’ for example)
• A good ear for tension and resolution as used in blues
• An intuitive sense of blues phrasing and timing

The first item on my list, confidence,– will of course vary from one individual to another at the outset, but proactively focusing on the other  items on the list will itself result in an increase in your level of confidence.

Good coordination, technique and a stock of licks comes from lots of practice, but the last three items on the list are probably best improved by simply listening to as much great blues guitar playing as you can.

Many years ago, I wrote a six-verse long Texas style blues instrumental specifically to help students bridge the gap between scales and solos.

This tune is designed to help you use the scale notes in simple phrases that resolve to the chords used in the twelve-bar sequence and to establish a feel for how the lead lines fit in with the chords (the ‘call and response’ pattern mentioned earlier).

The first verse, shown in detail in the video lessons below, starts by establishing a rhythmic pattern typical of the style most associated with Stevie Ray Vaughan and if you want to progress onto learning some of his tunes, this is a great primer!

These lessons are designed for beginners or near beginners, but I am sure that more experienced player will enjoy them too – they’ll just whiz through them quicker!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs4oFM9MqIc

The trickiest part is the timing, shown here in standard notation:

Notice the one beat rest at the start. This is best dealt with by counting yourself in:  1 2 3 4 1 … and then playing the notes on beats: 2 & 3 & 4 & 1. In the ‘call and response’ pattern these notes are the ‘call’ and the response comes from the chords played on beats 2(&) 3& (4)& of the second bar.

This rhythmic pattern is repeated throughout the verse.

If that explanation leaves you wondering if this is a bit more complex than it claims – please check out the video lesson – hearing it will make a lot more sense than my attempts to convey the idea in text!

Hope you enjoy learning this – if you do, hop over to www.secretguitarteacher.com where you’ll find a whole course that goes over all six verses on videos and you can also download the tab and backing tracks.

Copyright © 2011 Nick Minnion, (used by permission)

Nick Minnion has recorded over 100 video guitar lessons that can be found at his new site, www.secretguitarteacher.com.

He also runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit TeachGuitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.

Putting the Rhythm in the Blues was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

There’s an element of salesmanship, in the way I use this description, when I’m introducing the CAGED system to a student for the first time. I see this as necessary because I appreciate that it is not immediately obvious exactly what the CAGED system is, nor what it is good for. 

Let’s attempt to address the second issue first. If you ask me ‘What’s it good for?’ I think the best answer I can give is: ‘It’s good for finding things on the guitar fretboard. 
Think of a five-drawer filing cabinet, but instead of the drawers being full of old correspondence and copies of long-expired legal contracts and things, it has folders with much more interesting (to the guitarist) labels, such as: ‘Chords’, ‘Scales’, ‘Licks’, ‘Riffs’, ‘Arpeggios’ and  ‘Modes’. Also; quite unlike any filing cabinet I have ever actually been personally in charge of; everything in the ‘CAGED’ filing cabinet is beautifully and elegantly organised and always found in exactly the place it should be!

The CAGED system is taught in a wide variety of ways simply because it has a wide variety of applications. It is a system that is both very powerful and very adaptable. 

However, because it is powerful and adaptable it can easily be presented to the student of guitar as being more complicated than it really is. This is a little ironic, as the CAGED system is really a system for simplifying learning the guitar!’ 

I think the problem arises because the use you are able to make of the CAGED system is dependent upon other areas of knowledge – especially guitar music theory knowledge. 

So, how you use the CAGED system may ultimately be unlimited, but initially it will mostly depend upon what level of understanding you have of guitar music theory.  

With this in mind, I set out to record a video lesson that enabled guitar students to make good use of the CAGED system at the lowest possible point of entry – i.e. at a level where little, if anything needs to be known about guitar music theory.  Here’s “Part 1:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8a5SsbG-1Y

In this video, as well as in the following ”CAGED system Parts 2,” I’ll show you how to use the CAGED system simply to find notes on the fretboard. For example: to find all the ‘C’ notes on the fretboard – how long would that take you do you think? If the answer is greater than about five seconds then you will find this video lesson useful, interesting and immediately applicable. 

And here’s the second video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7MoHfh0ZvM

But, more importantly, both these videos will hopefully help you gain a very good understanding of the CAGED system and what it actually is! You will, metaphorically speaking, take delivery of a shiny, brand new five-drawer filing cabinet that magically organises itself!  

It’ll then be up to you, over time, to fill it up with other musically useful things.  

Hope that has whetted your appetite for the videos…because, did I already mention that the CAGED system is probably the single most important thing I ever learnt about playing the guitar…?

Nick Minnion has recorded Over 100 video guitar lessons that can be found at his new site: SecretGuitarTeacher.com. Nick also runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit TeachGuitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.

Cracking the CAGED System was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Unfortunately, most guitar players struggle with this for years because they don’t understand (or aren’t willing to do) the things that would really enable them to create consistently great music with the skills and knowledge they already have. Instead, most simply try to acquire new skills and do not seek to go deeper by learning more about the skills they already have but have not yet refined.

In the video below, we will focus on how to ‘use’ what you know and how to get a lot of cool sounds and emotion out of playing very few notes on the guitar. The more you learn how to get a lot from little, the easier it is for you to get a lot from a lot.

When creating or improvising guitar solos, most guitar players rely on ‘playing new notes’ (or more notes) in order to express themselves. This rarely works well.

The key to creating, improvising and playing great guitar solos is not ‘what’ you play, it’s ‘how you play it’.  Having great guitar phrasing is infinitely more valuable than having other great guitar skills. There are many ways to learn guitar phrasing, but the most important is to be able to play one note extremely well. Another great thing to practice is to make many small variations on a small single phrase. You want to focus not on what to play, or what the note options are, but instead on what you can do with a small phrase. How much emotion and interest you can squeeze out of something small.

Fact is, it is harder to be expressive with two or three notes than it is with lots of notes. However, after you master expression with a few pitches, your lead guitar playing will improve a lot when playing lots of notes.

Train your lead guitar skills by working with ‘less’ notes, so that you can master the ability to become fully expressive using all the notes, techniques and skills that you can already play, instead of working on ‘new skills’.

You can sometimes grow faster as a guitar player by learning more about your ‘existing’ skills instead of learning new ones. Training with a very small group of notes is one of the key methods you can use to do this.

Watch the lead guitar lesson video below to see exactly what I’m talking about and learn how to improve your lead guitar playing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkW8VeaAhbs

Download your FREE guitar eBooK about ‘Guitar Practicing Secrets’

©Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

About the author: Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and teaches electric guitar lessons online.

Improve Your Lead Guitar Playing: Lesson And Video was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

There are lots of ways to make guitar solos. Most guitarists focus on ‘what to play’ versus ‘how to play things’. Fact is, the nuances of phrasing (‘how’ the notes are played) often matter MORE than the notes we actually play. How many times have you heard someone play a solo ‘without’ much emotion? Often there was nothing wrong with their choice of notes. The solo lacked emotion and interest because the ‘phrasing’ was weak.

Guitar Phrasing is the most important aspect to creating great guitar solos, yet very few guitar players learn to develop this key element of their guitar playing.

One of the best things you can do to make better guitar solos is to carefully study your favorite singers. In the late 1990s, I began to study the vocal styles of my favorite singers. I learned to play on guitar every little nuance of their vocal phrasing and vibrato… and most importantly, the ‘musical contexts’ in which they made various phrasing and vibrato choices when singing. Singers cannot do many of things that we can do on the guitar, but they can naturally and effortlessly do things that are not common (but are still possible) to do on the guitar.

Listen to your favorite singers and notice the difference between their vocal phrasing (‘how’ they sing notes and phrases) and your guitar phrasing (‘how’ you play your notes and phrases). Then listen carefully to how these singers construct their phrases and compare that to how you create your guitar solos. When you really pay attention to this, you will probably make some very cool and powerful observations. This can be one of the best guitar solo lessons you can ever have. It can be a real eye (and ear) opening experience that can lead you to discover MANY new ideas that you can use to make you’re your own great guitar solos.

Here are three things you can learn and implement into your playing immediately so that you can consistently make better guitar solos.

Delayed Vibrato: Listen to how many singers sing a note (without vibrato at first) and then begin to apply vibrato to it a few moments later. The vast majority of guitar players don’t do this when soloing; instead they apply the vibrato immediately to the note. Although this can also sound good, it gets old to always immediately apply vibrato when you use it. So play a note on your guitar, let it ring out naturally (without vibrato) for a moment, then apply vibrato to it. In addition to creating a more ‘vocal style of guitar playing’ you may also notice that the note you just played sustains longer. (more on this in the video below).

Movement between notes: As you know, when playing notes on a piano there is no ability to ‘bend’ notes. Singers frequently ‘bend’ notes in both directions (up or down in pitch), although downward ‘bent’ notes are more common in most vocal styles. Guitar players frequently bend notes, but 99% of the time they only bend notes ‘up’ (in pitch). (more on this in the video below).

Intuitive Emotional Expression: Singers often manipulate tension and dissonance intuitively. They might sing the 9th of a chord because it makes a very specific emotional feeling. Most (non jazz) guitar players would naturally play the root while making a guitar solo (especially at the end of a phrase). This happens because guitar players typically are thinking about patterns and scale positions. And thus the ear is conditioned to ‘find the consonant notes’ when beginning and ending phrases while creating (or improvising) guitar solos. Singers don’t have ‘patterns’ and ‘positions’ to think about. They are only focused on their intuition – the emotion of each note they sing. This results in more natural options for the singer (compared to many ‘inexperienced’ guitar players) particularly at the beginnings and endings of phrases.

Watch the video below to see exactly what I’m talking about and hear a live demonstration of each.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFtePrgcC0w

To get more help with your guitar playing check out my 10 Free Guitar Solo Tips.

About the author: Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and teaches electric guitar lessons online.

© Tom Hess Music Corporation.

All Rights reserved.

How To Make A Great Guitar Solo was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Here are the good ways:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E03KVay2Gq0

If you are serious about your playing, and would like to learn to play better than you do now, instead of just learning “more stuff” and playing it the same way, I urge you to visit www.guitarprinciples.com, where you will find the knowledge and training that will enable you to achieve your highest potential as a guitarist.

You can still find David’s original text for this lesson here: While My Guitar Gently Weeps – A Finger Style / Chord Melody Arrangement

Or, if you prefer, there is a “condensed tablature version” that David created for the Guitar Noise blog here: Download gif (Right-click and “Save as”)

As always, please feel free to come by the Guitar Principles website (Guitar Principles) and drop me a line if you have any questions or comments.

Don’t miss Part 1 (Performance Notes) and Part 2 (Performance Notes for the Verses) of this lesson!

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – Performance Notes for the Bridge was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

This means applying force to the strings in such a way that unnecessary tension is minimized and eliminated, and necessary tension is balanced when applied, and released when its job is done. That is what I am doing when you see me play. The video for this lesson can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAjCxfTH1fc

You can still find David’s original text for this lesson here: While My Guitar Gently Weeps – A Finger Style / Chord Melody Arrangement

Or, if you prefer, there is a “condensed tablature version” that David created for the Guitar Noise blog here: Download gif (Right-click and “Save as”)

If you are serious about your playing, and would like to learn to play better than you do now, instead of just learning “more stuff” and playing it the same way, I urge you to visit www.guitarprinciples.com, where you will find the knowledge and training that will enable you to achieve your highest potential as a guitarist. Please feel free to come by the Guitar Principles website (Guitar Principles) and drop me a line if you have any questions or comments.

Don’t miss the other two parts of this series: Part 1 – Performance Notes and Part 3 – Performance Notes for the Bridge.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – Performance Notes for the Verses was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Beyond the fingering, much of what I will explain to you would not otherwise be obvious, or even visible to you. This is because much of what developed players are doing when they play, all those things that “make it look easy”, are, in fact, invisible. You would never know what I or some other player is really doing just by watching. Much of the time, the player doesn’t really know themselves!

Well, you’re going to know now!

At Guitar Principles, we are dedicated to your excellence as a guitar player, and my system of learning and playing guitar is for those of you who are likewise dedicated to your excellence. You are going to see, in this lesson, the application of many aspects of my methods, and it will help you greatly to play this piece and everything else you play.

For those players who would like to go deeper, from the application of these methods of guitar mastery, to the actual foundation of them, you are always welcome to visit Guitar Principles, where you will find the knowledge and training that will enable you to master all the wonderful music, like this arrangement by David Hodge, that you find on www.guitarnoise.com!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P76DWglLsPE

You can find the tablature here: Download gif (Right-click and “Save as”)

Don’t miss the next two parts of this lesson: Part 2 – Performance Notes for the Verses and Part 3 – Performance Notes for the Bridge.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – Performance Notes was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

When I was in high school and college, I thought that Chicago and The Guess Who and Blood Sweat & Tears were among the best rock bands around. I loved their horns (trumpets, saxes, trombones), and learned to listen carefully to figure out how many types of horns were being used. I learned how to play the brass parts on piano. Many Motown groups used brass to spice up a dance tune. Stevie Wonder’s “Superstitious” has that great horn riff, with the bass chasing it all the way. Even the Rolling Stones use horns on “Bitch” and the Who have used horns almost since their inception, mostly because John Entwhistle was a terrific French Horn player as well as an exceptionally talented bassist. Sax solos have long been a part of Rock’n'Roll, but I’m talking about the complete section.

So one of my dreams has always been to play with a full horn section. And I have done it twice, so far. Those of you that track our family adventures know that we organize and perform in our middle school talent show. Our kids have always played their saxes (or clarinet or flute) in these shows, but usually they were as solo instruments. Laura sings with one of the boys, I play bass and run the rehearsals.

For my son’s eighth grade year, I decided to see if I could pull together a horn section and produce a reasonable product. First, I recruited other eighth graders from the Jazz Band: my son on tenor sax, his friends on alto, trumpet and trombone. The important thing here is that they all can play pretty well, they can read music, and they get along with each other reasonably well.

The Jazz Band teacher told me where I could find the charts he uses, and I bought the charts for Get Ready and I Got You ($40 for each song, in case you’re interested). This is more expensive than standard sheet music, but it’s more complicated too. These charts have numbered measures and labeled sections, and they are arranged in horn-friendly keys.

Our third song was the blues ballad True Love by Pat Benatar (with the Room Full of Blues horn section), which I couldn’t find anywhere. I asked one of the guys at the local music school, and for $100, he wrote it for us. The song is pretty easy to transcribe, but he knew how to arrange the horns to build chords and harmonies correctly, so it was worth it.

I gave everyone a CD with the three songs, so they had an idea of what we were playing, but the keys were slightly different.

Now I have a couple of serious impediments to being a big-band leader; first I can’t play any horn, and second, I can’t sing (so I can’t fake the horn parts). However, I have lots of experience jamming, and I’ve learned how to teach band dynamics.

So at our first rehearsal I passed out copies of the charts (never give out the originals!), and we got started. Over the years, the way we play Get Ready has morphed from the original recording. So I tell the kids: “OK, we start at measure 33, play through 40, and then go to the verse starting in measure 9.” Needless to say, they looked at me strangely. But they played it, and it sounded fine.

As we got organized for True Love, I was explaining to our young drummer that I really needed her to keep the time true, as I would be focusing on my fretless bass line. We started playing, and I concentrated on my fingering and slides. Suddenly, this power chord grew behind me – the horns were playing the opening crescendo perfectly. I literally stopped playing and turned around. They all looked at me bewildered. “Sorry, but I wasn’t expecting that, and it was wonderful.”

We rehearsed three times, organizing solos and making sure our outros were tight. The night of the show, the kids did a great job, and we received praise from everyone. For the kids, it may have been just another gig, but for me it was a magical performance.

Four years later, my daughter is in eighth grade, and I decide to do it again. I followed the same routine, buying the chart for Just You ‘n’ Me, and having a different person create a full section chart for Moondance. I recycled Get Ready and we were off. I won’t bore you with the details, as there were many similarities, and some individual differences. In the end, we pulled it off, and the horns sounded great!

Pause for a moment of parental bragging: Our daughter Jacqui mainly plays alto sax, but she also plays the flute and clarinet. She played clarinet for the soprano sax solo in Just You ‘n’ Me, and played the “lead flute” on Moondance, switching to sax for her solo. Some of her classmates knew she played the other instruments, but they’d never actually seen her switch off in the middle of a song.

So if you’ve ever thought about playing with horns, I’m here to tell you that it can be done, and done well.

Here is a small video snippet from Just You and Me. The first part shows the harmony with vocals, and the second part show a pretty good soli-riff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQU1xWUg_h8

Places to buy horn charts:

• JW Pepper: Charts for Schools
• Bob Baader, horn chart arranger

Playing with Horns was written by Dan Lasley for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Once upon a time I used to play metal, had hair, wore leather pants and played guitar on stage leaning over a fan. I was a legend in my own mind. So drawing on that long forgotten experience, let’s figure out this hammer on/pull off/tapping thing using the ending section of Van Halen’s Eruption as both example and exercise.

First though, let’s define things:

Hammer on – Note generated by lightly snapping your finger down behind a fret. (Check out the music guide entry on hammer-on for more explanation)

Pull off – Note generated by removing your finger from a string, slightly pulling the string as you do.

Tap – Note generated by tapping the fretboard behind a fret with your non-fretting hand’s index or middle finger.

One thing at a time, let’s get Hammer-on down. I’m going to use an acoustic for this first part.

Now I’m not going to re-invent the wheel. I’m just going to paraphrase it a bit. I took all of this next section practically word for word from David’s wonderful article Tricks of the Trade:

On your guitar, make an open Em chord. Strum the chord and then one at a time lift, pick the open string, and hammer on with your fretting fingers. It is just a little snapping motion, bring down your middle finger where it is supposed to go. This isn’t a brute force thing. It’s simply a sharp little tap.

When you are playing alternating bass with your chords, a hammer-on helps to spice things up a bit or it can be used as a rhythmic fill.

Try this on your acoustic or without distortion if you’re playing electric:

It should sound like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Does it? Great! You are on your way!

Okay let’s go to the Pull-off.

Let’s stick with the acoustic. Put your finger on the second fret of the A string. Pick or strum the string with your strumming hand. This will sound the B note. Now pull your finger off.

If you’re lifting your finger straight off the string, you will not get much of a sounding of the open A. What you need to do is pull the string when you’re removing the finger and the best way to do this is with a slightly downward motion. Basically what you are doing is “picking” the string with the finger on the neck.

It should sound like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here is the Exercise in C from David’s lesson. It combines hammer-ons and pulloffs. See the article for the tab.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

And there you have it. Two thirds of what you need to know to play Eruption: Hammer-on and Pull off.

Before we go any further, here is our Guitar Noise disclaimer:

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Remember, too, that this is just how I do it. If you are only looking to play along with the recording this isn’t for you. I think EVH tunes it down a half step and he plays so fast I have no idea what he is doing really. But this will give you a pretty darn good approximation of the style and feel. I actually play a couple of sections on the way up that he doesn’t just to lengthen the thing a bit. Besides, practically no one will notice the difference on stage.

Now when you see this tabbed out it seems really complex. It isn’t really. You are playing sets of four notes over and over and over again.

It goes like this tap, pull off, hammer on, hammer on. Start again, tap, pull off, hammer on, hammer on.

Take this slowly and work your way into speed. It will come.

I’m going to break this into three parts. The first part is going up the neck. The next section is coming back down. The final section is eruption of the blood vessels in your forearm.

In the first section, going up the neck, each of the sections is repeated eight times. Think of these sections individually and then put them together.

Now put away that acoustic and get out the electric.

Let’s pick and hammer.

We are going to use the B string since that is where we are going to end up anyway.

So here’s what we are going to do. Pick the open B, now hammer on with your left hand index finger onto the fourth fret.

Great, but wait there’s more, leave your index finger on that fourth fret and hammer on the seventh fret with your ring finger.

Do this 43, 895 times or until your forearm feels like it is about to fall off.

Now let’s pick and pull-off.

On your B string, place your index finger on the fourth fret. Now pick that string and ever so slightly pull your fretting finger down towards the floor and off. It should pluck the open string.

Now fret the B string at the seventh fret with your ring finger AND fret it at the fourth fret with your index finger. Pluck the B string. Now pull off with your ring finger. You should sound the note of the fourth fret. But there’s more, now pull off your index finger on that fourth fret, sounding the open note.

Now the only other thing is the tap. Bring the finger of your choice down, (I use the index) on the twelfth fret. It should sound a nice and clear note. Remember you are using a sharp, but light tapping motion. In this exercise, I am ever so slightly pulling off with my tapping finger. Try it and see what you think. It depends a lot on your setup.

When you get this going you will notice an accordion-like pattern, the tapping finger goes up, the hammer-ons follow. The tapping finger goes up, the hammer-ons follow.

For examples of all of the above, check out the MP3 after the tab. I play the whole thing slowly.

Here is “Going up the neck”: Notice each section is repeated 8 times except the last which I play only four times in the recording.

Here is an MP3 of the going up section at a slow tempo.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Onward to section two; let’s go back down the neck.

Same thing as before, but you only repeat each section three times. I tabbed it out, but notice the first 8 repeated sections are really the same set of four played twice.

Go slowly and just memorize the pattern. Once you have the muscle memory in place, speed will come quickly.

And finally, here is the section where your arm explodes. Have I said work this slowly? No need to say it here, you have no choice. This is the little finishing piece, six each of two riffs, play the first one again, skip to the last section and alternate them 1 time each as fast as you can. When your arm starts to bleed, run your fingernail or pick down your low E and hit a power chord at the bottom.

And here it is complete and up to speed. Ha-ha, up to speed, I crack me up. It’s all relative. It’s as up to speed as I’m going to get. I’m playing my 1979 Fender Heavy Metal Strat, with everything at 11, played through distortion, compression, flanger, and a dash of reverb. I stomp on a stereo phaser at the very end.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Enjoy it, but don’t blame me when your left arm packs its bags and walks out on you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find where my arm stormed off to.

The Great Guitar Noise Experiment

This is an experiment. Use it at your own risk. No guarantees here.

The links below will take you to a short video of the lesson above. Let us know in the news section how this works for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcB3vmBnieU

Hammer on, Pull off, Tap, Repeat was written by Nick Torres for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise