Erik Mongrain is a Canadian guitarist who is specialized in "lap tapping", a technique that you can compare with playing piano on a guitar. With the guitar on his lap, he taps the chords as if it is a piano while also playing rhythmic elements on the body of the guitar.
According to his website, Erik's main influence is Michael Hedges, one of the pioneers of tap guitar.
Erik Mongrain is not alone though, these days there are quiet a lot of tap players and most of them have an impressive technique (I'm not even going to try tap guitar myself, I guess that means I'm getting old :-) What I miss sometimes in tap guitar players is musicality. I'm watching these videos on Youtube, thinking "wow, that's amazing", but on the other hand it bores me after one minute.
Erik plays this piece, Airtap, on a guitar with the open tuning of F: FACFAF.
Anyway here's the video:
In case you want to make an attempt at Airtap yourself, you can download the guitar tabs here (in exchange for $10/piece): http://www.erikmongrain.com/Login.asp
Posts
1 comments:
This and Hedges work are meditative, but certainly kind of droney. For musicality, Stanley Jordan is the man. Not only does he tap chords and melody like a pianist, he has a real sense of harmony and natural fluidity. Sad to see he has not had more success.
Post a Comment