In my opinion tapping is one of the most overused and misused guitar techniques out there. Poorly executed tapping sounds juvenile, whereas majestically executed tapping sounds beautiful. If you want to hear some absolutely superb tapping technique check out Nuno Bettencourt on the songs "He-Man Woman Hater" and "Get the Funk Out". Nuno tends to play arpeggios via tapping and that is one of the most fluid, smooth ways to play arpeggios. If Nuno's technique doesn't get you fired up, then check out Jeff Watson's solo on the Night Ranger song "You can Still Rock in America". There Jeff shows off his 8 finger tapping technique for which he is well known.

In this lesson I will go over some basic tapping exercises and then end with some more advanced exercises that demonstrate tapped arpeggios.

In this exercise, you will practice tapped slides (and hopefully not get a blister in the meantime!). If you are like me, and don't use tapping that often, then your tapping fingers could very well form a painful blister from the motion of sliding back and forth between the 15th and 17 frets. But when it comes to tapping, you definately want to be able to throw some slides in there. It is a really cool effect!

The fretboard diagram for this exercise is similar to the first exercise, wit the addition of the A note at the 17 fret. By adding this note, we are actually turning this exercise into a C Major 7th arpeggio. How about that!

For this exercise, tap onto the 15th fret with whatever finger you are comfortable with, then slide with that finger up to the 17th fret, and then slide back down to the 15th fret. Be careful though - if you do this exercise enough times, you may develop a blister!