Guitar/Tapping

Tapping is the short name of fretboard tapping or finger tapping: the act of tapping the fingers against the strings in order to produce sounds, rather than striking or plucking the strings. Specifically, it usually refers to two-handed tapping, that is, tapping involving both the left and right hand. It is not clear who discovered tapping, but it was certainly popularized, but not discovered, by Eddie van Halen. Van Halen was listening to "Heartbreaker" by Led Zeppelin, and he was quite inspired by the solo, which contained a variation of tapping. This is arguably the song that pushed Van Halen to popularize and use "tapping" frequently. A rather different kind of independent two-handed tapping, which is a whole playing method rather than a technique, was discovered by Harry DeArmond and named "The Touch System" by his student Jimmie Webster. Another method of independent tapping was discovered by Emmett Chapman, where the right hand comes over the fretboard and lines up with the frets like the left. Therefore this book dubs the three kinds of tapping Interdependent tapping and The Touch System", and the "Free Hands Method."