Electric Guitar: Close Finger Tapping

Have you ever heard Allan Holdsworth play the guitar? Holdsworth is a jazz musician whose main instrument is the electric guitar and he regularly executes wide interval licks in his improvisations that involve highly unusual scales and patterns. He plays these wide intervals using the fingers of his fretting hand only, with no finger-tapping involved. For this article we will execute some Holdsworthian style licks, except we will be using finger-tapping to make the execution of the wide intervals a little easier. (This lesson is actually based on a technique used by the great guitarist, Greg Howe, after he stated in an interview -- I forget exactly which magazine, but it could have been Guitar Player -- that he used this particular technique to imitate Allan Holdsworth's amazing sound). Here is my version of Greg Howe's technique:

High E string: {- -15-19(t)-15-14-17(t)-14-12-15(t)-12-} continue on B string: {-15-19(t)-15-14-17(t)-14-12-15(t)-12-} Repeat.

All notes above are either tapped, hammered-on, or pulled-off to (even the first note on the 15th fret high E string, which is called a "hammer-on-from-nowhere").

Playing through the tablature above, you can quickly see why I have named this article "Close Tapping." At certain places in the lick, your tapping finger will be quite close to your fretting hand, which is fairly uncommon for most finger-tapping licks. Also notice that your fretting hand will stay in one position, while your tapping finger will move down the length of the string (you should use only one finger for the tapping part).

Also observe that the intervals played are quite different than those normally executed by a typical fretting hand (if played in the normal way without tapping) which would be difficult due to a normal hand's physical limitations (Holdsworth has very large and quite dexterous hands). By finger-tapping the notes of the lick, you can generate a large amount of speed. Also, you should hammer, pull, or tap every note, even the first one. By doing a "hammer-on-from-nowhere" (another unusual thing about this lick) to sound the initial G note on the 15th fret high E string, your other hand will have time to move into place to perform the finger tapping.

So practice the lick above and work it up to scary speed. Move it to different positions on the fret board and change the notes around to fit different patterns or scales. See how you can adapt the lick and morph the underlying idea to fit your own personal soloing needs. And always have fun and strive to make good compelling music.