How would you play this?

bingefeller

The above is from Steve Vai's solo on David Lee Roth's tune Big Trouble and starts at 2.35ish.  

Just wondering how you would go about learning this?  It looks to me like Vai is just tapping away and not worrying so much about beats and going more for a rhythmic feel.  It's difficult to learn this and capture his feel and have it sounding semi-decent when playing along (at a slower speed).  The taps that happen on the beat are OK, it's the bits when he pulls off to a note and that note lands on another beat that sort of throw me...

Any tips?   

ElectroDan

I was thinking it might be a Vai lick before I scrolled down and read the text. He does seem to use tricky rhythms when tapping. Sounds pretty cool when up to speed though.

Other than slowing the original music down and seeing if it's easier to hear where the accents are, I could only suggest very slow repetition until the lick is second nature to you. I suppose your already doing that. Good luck.

bingefeller

ElectroDan said:

I was thinking it might be a Vai lick before I scrolled down and read the text. He does seem to use tricky rhythms when tapping. Sounds pretty cool when up to speed though.

Other than slowing the original music down and seeing if it's easier to hear where the accents are, I could only suggest very slow repetition until the lick is second nature to you. I suppose your already doing that. Good luck.

I'm using my own arrangement of 8 notes on the first beat then using 9 notes per beat until the end of the lick.  I'd imagine that Steve Vai wouldn't play it exactly the same as the record live, although I'm pretty certain he is more than capable of it.  It'll be a long, long time before I can play this up to speed.    

ElectroDan

I pretty much gave up on tapping after trying this type of lick, and working my way through the "Extreme - Pornograffiti" tab book (I'm not sure if the transcriber had any more of a clue than I did).

When I eventually worked out that Nuno was using a repeating pattern (to a certain extent), I started to make some headway. I still can't do it like either of these masters, and never tap live. But it's fun to tear through at home.

bingefeller

ElectroDan said:

I pretty much gave up on tapping after trying this type of lick, and working my way through the "Extreme - Pornograffiti" tab book (I'm not sure if the transcriber had any more of a clue than I did).

When I eventually worked out that Nuno was using a repeating pattern (to a certain extent), I started to make some headway. I still can't do it like either of these masters, and never tap live. But it's fun to tear through at home.

@ElectroDan I have that Extreme book and it is the worst transcription book I have.   

Handsome_Chris

I keep meaning to learn God Blessed Video. I think that sounds stellar.

And looks flash.

bingefeller

@handsomechris that's a great tune! The tapping is quite easy as it's nice and organised.

ElectroDan

I'd never seen that Alcatrazz video before. Vai loves hamming it up doesn't he!

@bingefeller - Yes Pornograffiti had a lot of errors in the bits everyone bought the book for. I guess the transcriber thought... nobody will be able to tell if i'm right or not anyway.

LightB4sound

Wow, glad to see I am not the only one who has found that Pornograffiti tab book had many many error. I think some of the were musical typos (i.e. right note, but the tab editor placed it on the wrong fret), but there were a considerable number of mistakes, especially with some of the tapping sections which are much simpler to play when you correct them!

God Blessed video is a great tapping example from Mr Vai...that and Building the Church!

bingefeller

The tuning for Little Jack Horny is wrong too. I don't have the book to hand but Nuno plays it drop D, I'm pretty sure the book has the song in a different tuning with Nuno playing tapped harmonics in the intro. He's actually playing natural harmonics in the dropped D tuning.