Look Mom! Two Hands!
JOEL HOEKSTRA
New York City-based guitarist Joel Hoekstra
plays for Night Ranger, the hit Broadway
musical Rock of Ages, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Hoekstra can be heard
on Night Ranger’s latest album, Somewhere
in California, Jack Blades’ Rock N’ Roll Ride,
and Jeff Scott Soto’s Damage Control. His
solo effort,
13 Acoustic Songs, is available at
his website joelhoekstra.com.
CHOPS: Advanced
THEORY: Beginner
LESSON OVERVIEW:
• Understand the fundamentals
of 8-finger tapping.
• Create smooth, legato lines
that combine open strings
with linear phrases.
• Develop a more precise ham-mer-on and pull-off technique.
is not only used, but has proven to be a
major asset for me—an ace up my sleeve
if you will.
Here I’ll share a few tapping ideas that
I’ve been using lately and hopefully get
a few of you to develop calluses on “the
other hand.”
To start, we are just going to work on
Fig. 1, which is a simple chromatic exercise
that will strengthen all of your fingers. It’s
really important to start very slow to make
sure all of the notes come out nice and
clear. This can be done on any eight frets
and any string of course, but to keep things
easy, we’ll just go with the 5th fret through
the 12th fret on the second string.
Fret the index finger of your left hand
down on the 5th fret and then use some
simple hammer-ons moving up to the 8th
fret. Now the real fun starts! Use your
right-hand index finger on the 9th fret,
and while keeping your index finger down
(all four left-hand fingers should still be
down), fret your middle finger on the 10th
fret, ring finger on 11th fret and pinky on
the 12th. The next part is where most peo-
ple run into trouble with this technique:
pull-offs. Work your way back down by
lifting your pinky up and across the string.
You’ll notice the pull-off will sound much
better by lifting the pinky up instead of
down. Pushing down is the equivalent of
pushing up for a pull-off with your left
hand—not good. Now that you have the
important info, let’s keep going. Lift the
ring off to the middle, middle to index,
and then index off to those left-hand
fingers that are still waiting. Now simply
Fig. 1 Fig. 1
44 & oeoeoe#
+
oeoe#
+++
oeoe# oe
oe#oenoe#oenoe#oenoe
T1 T2 T3 T4
56789101112 111098765
˙
CLICK HERE to hear
sound clips of
these examples.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
&‰
+
Hey there! Right now you are either saying, “Who the heck is this guy?”
or “Hey, I know that dude!” If it’s the first,
here’s the story: I might be one of the busiest guitar players you’ve never heard of. I
have a double major in working my butt
off and remaining relatively unknown. I
play with the band Night Ranger, the hit
Broadway show Rock of Ages, and also tour
with Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
When I was a kid growing up in the
’80s, I was lucky enough to have a great
guitar teacher named TJ Helmerich who
got me going with the 8-finger tapping
technique. After missing the first wave of
commercial relevance for this technique
in the rock world (see “shred era”) and
entering a seemingly endless period where
nobody thought lead guitar was even
remotely cool, I now find myself with
three really great gigs where this technique
˙
T2
T2
oe
14
12
7
4 0 4 7 12 14 16 14 12 7 4 0 4 7 12
6
6
T1 T2 T3
6
6
T1 T2
T1 T2
T1
04712 141274047121416141274047121412740
12
&
+
oeoe
6
oeoe# oe
+++
oeoeoeoeoe# oeoe
oeoe# oe
++
6
oeoe
+
oeoe
6
T1 T2 T3
T1 T2
T1
&
+
14127404712
oeoe
6
oeoe# oeoe
++ +
T1 T2 T3
