Two Hand Tapping in Heavy Metal Guitar

Series Summary

Heavy metal is a style of rock music typified by loud, distorted guitars and bombastic drumming. The genre’s roots stem from the “heavy” blues rock of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, as well as the darker sounds of Black Sabbath which later inspired the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden incorporated many classical constructions to their music, creating an aggressive and intricate sound. When it comes to heavy metal, the guitar and drums dominate the sound, and the louder the music, the better. Theatrics are a big part of heavy metal music as well and it is not uncommon to see pyrotechnics and props used onstage at a concert. In this series of videos, get tips on the basics of heavy metal guitar playing. Learn how to tune your guitar to various octaves in this series. Also get expert tips on cool guitar effects like distortion, scales and shredding. Learn more about pinch and tap harmonics and harmonic minor. Get tips on playing a seven string metal guitar including tips on speed picking and shredding. Watch as our expert demonstrates the differences between skimping arpeggios and skipping diminished arpeggios. Learn how to use the whammy bar to get a special effect and bend the sound of certain notes. After watching this series of videos, impress your friends with your new heavy metal guitar skills.

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Gary Schutt and I’m going to talk to you about two hand tapping. Two hand tapping is when you take your right hand and you bring it over to the fret board and you tap out notes with your right hand. There’s many different ways to do this. Now when typing with your right hand, some players have different techniques, some players will use their 1st finger while holding their thumb and middle finger. Some, like me, will hold the pick normally and tap with the middle finger. You don’t want to tap on a fret, you want to tap in the space between the frets because tapping on the fret gives an unpleasant and sometimes out of tune note. So some examples of tapping are picking a note for you left hand and bringing on for your right hand. You can bend a note, you can slide a note, you can move it around, or use a combination of all of those, you can go between different strings, you can do a really fast run from the bottom, then come up and tap a high note, such as this. if you want to get really fancy, you can use 2 fingers on your right hand. "