In our first solo study for EVH we take a look at a purely finger tapping piece that will really push your technique to the limit! Jay will take you through the entire exercise nice and slowly and break down every single section so that you fully understand it.
In our first solo, we are looking at a finger tapping masterclass! Just like EVH used to do in Van Halen, this piece highlights a variety of chords in the finger tapping, and therefore we need no real backing track! This is a pure indulgent piece that will impress anyone you play it to. Your first task is simple, listen to it! Go through the track a few times until you have the melody in your head and then move onto the next lesson where Jay will start taking you through it.
In the first section, we are tapping through 4 different arpeggios. We are running through an E minor, C major, F# diminished and finally a B major. Take it nice and slow and work through just these first 4 chords to start with. Take a look at the tab for the full piece, highlighting and looping those first 4 chords. Good luck!
In the second section, we start exactly as we did in section 1, with the E minor and C major arpeggio. We then move to a D7 arpeggio where we previously went to the F# diminished. Following on from that we use a G major arpeggio. So our chord progression is E minor, C major, D7 and G major. Use the tab to learn this section and then put the whole thing together up to this point!
In this section, we now move from the B string onto the E string, which can be tricky in itself! The pattern stays the same, we simply run through some new arpeggios. The arpeggios we are using are C major, G major, A minor and E major, which repeats twice. Be sure that you can visualise these arpeggios as you play through the tune as these will be very useful in your own writing. So, in the tab, simply highlight this section. Take it nice and slow and then gradually add the rest of the tab we looked at before.
We will now look at the final lick! This lick is in A minor and we are using notes from the A Dorian scale, as pictured in the fretboard diagrams. This scale is very often used in Van Halen tunes, so it's worth nailing the scale shape.
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