Workshops - Introduction

I have recently decided to develop an online tutorial which will explore the various aspects of this unusual form of playing. These lessons are directed at guitarists who want to broaden their musical horizons, and have not explored the two-handed tapping method. As I am not an experienced teacher I would greatly appreciate any feedback - you can email me at . I will gladly continue this and submit additional lessons if I know people find them helpful, so please ask any questions you may have.

Some prerequisites for this course:

1. A working knowledge of the fingerboard - this is essential. I highly recommend the exercises on www.musictheory.net.
2. Familiarity with standard musical notation - this is a key element which will be an important factor in later musical development. Once again, I recommend the tutorials on www.musictheory.net. Learn both the treble and bass clefs - you can see the reason for this below.
3. A rudimentary knowledge of harmony, the circle of fifths and other aspects of music theory. However, this is not required at first (unlike the understanding of musical notation mentioned above). The ability to play keyboard instruments will also be helpful.

By way of introduction I recommend the following article by Stanley Jordan. It goes into detail on how to set up your guitar for this method, the proper posture, basic intonation techniques, etc.

Of course, it is extremely important to be systematic, focused and work hard in order to achieve results. The first lessons are very easy - aimed mostly at beginners. Practice everything at a slow tempo at first and always use a metronome.

These lessons are meant for guitarists who play electric six-string guitar tuned (high to low) : e, b, g, d, a, e. All tabulature is in this tuning.

Musical notation

The exercises will be notated on two clefs (and two separate TABs): the treble clef is for the right hand while the bass clef is the for left. To make things easier I have transposed everything down by an octave. The following symbols are used:

T - note is tapped on, (place your finger on a string that is not vibrating)

P - note is pulled off, (pull your finger off the string)

H - note is hammered on, (place your finger on a string that has been picked or tapped)

You can click on the two icons located under each lesson to download the following files:

• - are TABs done in Power Tab Editor
• - files are my perfomances of the lesson

The mp3's are lo-fi (64kbit/s mono) which makes for small file size and adequate audio quality

If this tutorial has been helpful to you please send me an email. Please specify what you liked (or didn't like) and whether there is a particular area that you would like me to touch upon in the next edition. This will provide an added incentive for me to complete the next set of lessons...

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