ATONAL TAPPING LICK
(à la Buckethead)

Some of you pickers out there might already be familiar with Buckethead (a.k.a. Brian Carrol) through his solo work, or stints with Praxis, Primus, and Guns N' Roses (among numerous others). For those of you who aren't, you gotta check him out! All “gimmicks aside,” he's one heck of a creative psycho picker!

I've been a “fan” since the early '90s, after reading his third person perspectives in the pages of Guitar Player magazine. For the nuts and bolts of Buckethead, I personally recommend Praxis' Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandi), featuring Bootsy Collins, Bill Laswell, and Brain.

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The following atonal tapping phrase is modeled after some of the nutty “shock value” licks Buckethead busts out on the aforementioned Praxis album.

Here are the lick's key components:

• Three different right hand fingers (ring, middle, and index) used to tap/pull-off along each string, in succession

• Three different left hand fingers (ring, middle, and index) used to fret notes along each string, in succession

• The tapping ring finger (i.e., “a”) is used to tap/pull-off to the fret-hand's ring finger; the tapping middle finger (i.e., “m”) is used to tap/pull-off to the fret-hand's middle finger; the tapping index finger (i.e., “i”) is used to tap/pull-off to the fret-hand's index finger

• The interval distance between the tapped notes and the pulled-off-to fretted notes is a tritone (the interval of a “b5”)

• The exact same pattern played on one string is consistently relocated to an adjacent string, beginning on a note the interval of a tritone away.

TIP: Practice getting your coordination down—the combination of taps/pull-offs—along one string, before bothering incorporating the neighboring strings. Also, after practicing this for a spell, when it comes time to jack this puppy into higher tempo territory, you'll likely need to let your fret-hand go on autopilot (“Use the force, Luke!”) so you can keep tabs on the tapped notes. Unlike Buckethead, we humans only have two eyeballs, capable only of moving in parallel!

(*You can hear the lick FAST by clicking HERE*)

(*You can hear the lick SLOW by clicking HERE*)

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