Did prog musicians develop new playing techniques?

Easy Money wrote: ^ your video link does not work. Here is some two handed tapping from 1965. He starts off holding chords, then comes the tapping. Also, Dave Bunker developed a touch guitar in the early 1950s that proceded the stick by a decade at least, but I could not get videos of it.

This is the same video that I addressed from Dr. Wu. Yes, this is A KIND of two-handed tapping. It is different from the sort that Hackett and many others do today. His right hand is tapping different strings from his left hand. It is a different technique. One which deserves applause, but is different.

Let’s use an analogy. A person can bend a string up and shake it for vibrato when it gets to the desired pitch. Another person might bend a string up and mute it when it gets to the desired pitch. I think most would agree that these are distinctive techniques. The particulars matter. Why? Because they matter to the musicians who have it in their minds to do very particular things.

Atavachron wrote: Two-handed tapping has been used by stringed instrument players for ages, but it wasn't until good amplification was available that guys like Hackett and VanHalen were able to exploit high-end tone & wattage to magnify the technique. I suspect centuries ago the initial reason for using the non-fretting hand was to voice a note or interval that one could not reach with the fret hand, thereby extending a player's reach and harmonic range.

Yes, I think so in full, David. I would add that Hackett developed his version of tapping with the goal of keeping up with the keyboards. The high end amplification was helpful. Compressors were/are very helpful too. Hackett discovered that 2-handed tapping sounded good with a phaser in Shadow of the Hierophant, and then EVH rediscovered(?) the same thing with Eruption. BTW, some of what you said about extending the range of what players could reach reminded me of Keith Emerson’s use of knives to hold down certain notes on his organ. Had anyone else developed a similar knife technique?

P.S. Another thought occurred to me. Yes, amplification made it easier to get a tone out of fretting with the right hand when the left hand is already holding a note, while this was difficult with an acoustic instrument. Recall at least one of the old videos had the acoustic player tapping on different strings from his left hand. As any electric guitar player can testify, this is more difficult with an electric. Changing strings is more difficult because, without a resonant chamber, it’s difficult to hammer down on an open string and get anything to sound out. Hammering on an open string yields a whole lot more
sound on an acoustic because it has such a resonating chamber for the vibration to travel into. Consider also the Roy Smeck vid. He played other instruments, but he only did right handed tapping on the ukelele. He tapped over left handed chords. Since as coincidence has it I happened to be working on doing that on an electric for the last couple weeks, and I know it’s difficult and heavily dependent on a compressor in my signal chain. So, how is Roy Smeck able to do it? Because of the small size of the resonant chamber, it is very easy to get sound out of. Recall how he slapped at it and even blew into it at a couple points.






Edited by HackettFan - May 14 2018 at 22:49

Guitar finger tapping predates prog rock. Some of the first guitars designed for tapping were built many years before Prog was even thought of.  

Sax, nope. Rahsaan Roland Kirk was playing God knows how many saxes, flutes and nose flutes years before Dave Jackson (nice bloke) came up with the idea. 

Bass, nope. Fretless bass was played in jazz many years before prog musicians picked one up. 

Keyboards / synths - again no. There are no new techniques I can think of on keyboards, synths, organs or Mellotrons which were specific to prog rock. Of course, prog musicians were early adopters of synths, that's just historical coincidence. 

If those are just the bare bones facts, then I can tell you as someone who plays all those instruments, from a musical perspective, nothing new musically came out of prog rock in terms of technique. 

^ There are lots of jazz guitar players who use nylon strings, particularly in the world of Latin jazz, Charlie Byrd for example. There's more where that came from.

Easy Money wrote: ^ There are lots of jazz guitar players who use nylon strings, particularly in the world of Latin jazz, Charlie Byrd for example. There's more where that came from.

^ Some older rock musicians got you beat there, such as Waylon Jennings with Buddy Holly and Bill Black with Elvis Presley.

Frenetic Zetetic wrote: That's honestly what I figured. I can't hear it in that music, though. Squire was the first one where I could tell he was playing differently. Basically progressive rock is a lie, LOL.

Edited by cstack3 - May 18 2018 at 22:00