Eddie Van Halen Shows How He 'Invented' His Signature Electric Guitar Tapping, Stuns The Live Audience

Feb 29, 2020 by apost team

Everyone knows Van Halen, the iconic American hard rock band. They have received endless numbers of awards, sold huge numbers of albums, and been watched live by millions.

One unique feature of the band is the guitarist's finger-tapping technique, which he popularised and was rapidly taken up by many other guitarists.

Eddie Van Halen explained how he came across finger-tapping during an interview by Denis Quan, a music journalist, at the "What It Means to Be American" event held at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Fans were struck with awe as they watched Van Halen demonstrate his guitar tricks during the interview. One thing that really stood out was how fast Van Halen's fingers could fly over the guitar strings.

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While explaining how and why he came across finger-tapping, he said it occurred in a pre-internet era where you couldn't just sit down and watch a Youtube video to discover how to do something. So he had just spent a lot of time playing with a guitar and experimenting with various techniques to see what he liked.

Van Halen said he first came up with the idea at a Led Zepplin concert where the guitarist, Jimmy Page, played his guitar with one hand only. Normally, guitarists strum with one hand and use the other hand to work the strings on the neck of the guitar. After Van Halen realized at that Led Zeppelin concert that you could play the guitar by only working the strings at the neck, he tried doing that, but with two hands on the neck at once. And thus, the finger-tapping technique was born.

The rock world was shaken to its foundation in 1978 when Van Halen casually and without fanfare exhibited his technique at a live concert. However, Van Halen is very modest about the whole thing and clearly doesn't think it's all that important.

If you enjoyed this story about how a famous but modest guitarist popularised a new musical technique, why not forward it to your Van Halen fan friends?