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.

if you have never heard of Nuno Bettencourt, then you need to do yourself a favor and buy the first two CDs from the band Extreme. Extreme had a hit song called Get the Funk Out that has a pretty infamous tapping section. Nuno made a name for himself by playing tapped arpeggios in his trademark way.

The fretboard diagram above show the notes played for the first part of the section. This pattern then repeats itself, making it an easier riff than you might think by hearing it. I have indicated the suggested fingerings for this one.

Before playing this entire riff, get comfortable playing the first part at the position shown in the fretboard diagram. Once you nail down that pattern, then play the entire riff. All you do is continue sliding that pattern up the neck as shown in the Tab. If you want to hear the MIDI file up to speed (Nuno played it at 108 BPM), then make sure you set the MIDI playback tempo to 108.