Eddie Van Halen Guitar Lick & A Minor Blues

Video Transcript

"Hi in this lesson we're going to learn a killer lick in the style of Eddie Van Halen. It's in the key of A and starts in the seventeenth position way up high using the A Minor blues pentatonic scale. Notice how alternate picking allows you to shred faster while minimizing motion in your right hand. I'll play the lick four times for you. Let's listen at full tempo, three, four. Now let's break it down. You are up here on the seventeenth fret and most people would choose to put one finger per fret. Being that the frets are so close together and so small up here I find it more comfortable to use your third finger. Now this lick you are going to start by picking once with your index finger fretted on the seventeenth fret on the B string and you are going to hammer-on with your ring finger on the twentieth. Now hammering on you are just forcefully throwing your finger on there so that the string vibrates even more. So you're going to do that and pull off again and when you pull off you snap your finger off the string so that the friction created by your finger sliding off makes the string vibrate and your first finger is already fretted on the seventeenth so it's all that with one pick stroke. Then you are going to fret again this time with an up stroke on the twentieth fret on the G string with your ring finger and that's the whole pattern. You are going to do that over and over while alternative picking. Then you are going to bend up at the end of it with your third finger supporting it with the other two on the twentieth one whole step. If you need to figure out what that note is it is equal to two frets up so play that note, get it in your head and bend it up, always supporting it with two other fingers. So let's hear the whole lick at a slower tempo, three, four. One more time. Now let's hear the lick again this time with the half speed backing track, three, four."