Tapping and Combined Techniques

Tapping is the right-hand fingers “hammering” directly onto the fretboard to sound the string, with no left-hand pluck. Two-hand tapping can fret melody and accompaniment at the same time, and it's the core of pieces like Andy McKee's “Drifting.” To get started: with your right index or middle finger, strike a fret vertically and crisply (close to the fret wire, force concentrated), and after the note sounds, hook the finger off the string to follow through. Single notes first, slow tempo — get it clean before you talk about stringing a run together.

The essence of modern percussive fingerstyle (the Oshio, McKee, Don Ross crowd) is stacking the single techniques from the last few lessons into one package: the thumb lays down the kick drum, the fingers tap the snare, tapped harmonics light up the high end, tapping fills in the melody, and you add strum-hits on top. This is “the scenery in the distance” — you don't have to be able to do it all now, but knowing how the pieces fit together gives you a direction while you practice the single techniques.

There's also a “half-fingerstyle”: you hold a pick while plucking the treble strings with your middle and ring fingers — the pick handles the bass strings, the fingers handle the treble. It's very common in country, pop, and electric guitar, and it can do double stops, string skips, and banjo rolls. To get started: pick down on the bass + middle finger up on the treble, alternating on a single string, slow to fast. It's a different feel from pure fingerstyle — use whichever the situation calls for.