Tapping! Need some help..

[Suckbird]

So i decided that i'm going to learn tapping but i found it pretty hard...

my left hand isn't strong enough except the long finger..
also, are you supposed to have you fingers very close to the bridge when you tap? when i tap from a long distance, like a hammer then i get a huge ugly harmonic sound..

this is from a total newbie tapper, anyway, i have seen what people can do with and it's cool!

[Alowishus]

Im a tapping noob myself, but ive been at it for a couple months so I guess I could offer some help. When you tap, im pretty sure your fingers should be nowhere near the bridge, both hands should be on the neck.

[travatron4000]

Yeah Alowishus, to tap you use a lot of force to press the string against the frets with both hands. it allows you to play over more of the neck than you could with one hand. for an idea think about how'd you play a Chapman Stick

~trav

[Atomic-Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by Suckbird

are you supposed to have you fingers very close to the bridge when you tap? when i tap from a long distance, like a hammer then i get a huge ugly harmonic sound..

well, i found that if you "float" your other fingers (the ones not holding a note) over the strings you're tapping on, it will deaden those "ugly harmonics"

[mattwells]

What you are hearing is a by-product of tapping. If you tap the 5th fret on your E string, you get the 'A' sounded, but you also get whatever note the other section of string vibrates at (in this example, whatever note exists in between the Nut and the 4th fret). The way that many people eliminate this is with a hair scrunchie. Yes, the same thing your sister used in the 80's (or if you are too young to remember that, the same thing 'Deb' from Napoleon Dynamite wears). You can keep it past the nut while not tapping and then slide it over the nut to mute the strings when tapping.

[Suckbird]

I try to mute it with my left hand, it sounds much better than when i started
I'm going to buy "the art of tapping"