Here's the next episode of Brewster's Millions Of Rants with a special tribute to the late-great Edward Van Halen and his complete mastery of natural and artificial harmonics. As I mentioned in this lesson/rant, my first published book with Hal Leonard 'Harmonics For Guitar' (2002) is a noticeable tribute to this legendary guitarist, and several examples/areas of that book mention, explain, and target countless ideas using various harmonics on the guitar that came directly from Eddie's fingers - much like this episode!
This "rant" includes countless licks, tricks, and fills coming directly from Van Halen's music, but only targeting the use of natural/artificial harmonics. The closer you analyze his music, you'll notice they're literally sprinkled throughout every Van Halen album - from the 1978 debut to 2012's 'A Different Kind of Truth.' Eddie played harmonics all over the place and this lesson captures a number of his ideas using them as licks/fills/tricks, with the attempt of supplying your playing with some new ideas to experiment with, much like Eddie (obviously) did when he was putting his style together and "filling in the cracks" - so to speak.
Harmonics are very interesting and aside from being a Van Halen fan since I was 12 years old and noticing his use of them early on, I've also written a book centered around many of Van Halen's favorite harmonic techniques and ideas, along with writing a Guitar Player lesson in the January 2018 issue - 'How To Employ Natural Harmonics Creatively.' Needless to say, I'm very comfortable and fascinated with harmonics, and Eddie's one of the main reasons why.
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~ REST IN PEACE ~ EDWARD VAN HALEN ~ 1955-2020 ~
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