Chords for The REAL way to play Runnin' With the Devil by Van Halen! Weekend Wankshop 173
Tempo:
76.125 bpm
Chords used:
Db
Eb
Ebm
B
Ab
Tuning:Standard Tuning (EADGBE)Capo:+0fret
Start Jamming...
It's the first track on their landmark debut album, and it's one of the easiest songs in
their entire catalog, but I still see a whole lot of people playing the main riff to Running
With The Devil by Van Halen incorrectly.
So let's check it out.
[B] [Db]
[Eb] [Db]
[Eb] [Db] [Eb]
[Db] [Ebm] [Cm]
[E]
[G] [E]
Hey there guys, and welcome to another installment of Weekend Wank Shop.
[B] Here's your good buddy, Uncle Ben.
Van Halen 1 changed the world of guitar as we know it.
It's easily one of the most important guitar records ever made, and I think it should be
required listening for everybody who plays.
That being said, I've always thought it was kind of funny that they chose to open the
record up with Running With The Devil, considering that it's probably the least ferocious guitar
song on the album.
It doesn't have any crazy tapping or anything like that on it.
Just kind of standard classic rock fare.
But with the best guitar tone, the main riff of this song isn't anything hard to play,
but I've seen so many bad tabs of this over the years.
So in my [Em] unending quest to rid the world of fake news guitar lessons, today we're going
to look at the real way to play that riff.
And as always, there's a full tab for this week's lesson over on my Instagram page.
Be sure to follow me over at Ben Eller Guitars, find the tab for this week's lesson, learn
how to play it, then upload a video of yourself shredding through it, along with the hashtag
Weekend Wank Shop.
So the first thing you're going to want to do here is [Eb] to tune your guitar down a half
[Ab] step to Eb, Ab, [F] Db, Bb, Db, and [G] Eb, like every other song on Van Halen 1.
I'll tell you, a big component that a lot of people miss out on when trying to capture
that Eddie sound is don't skimp out on that reverb.
[Eb] You've got to have a pretty significant amount of sauce on that tone to get it sounding right.
Now the first thing that you hear from Eddie's guitar is that weird, chimey squawk that happens
during the count-in.
Now I'm doing that by strumming behind the nut of my guitar right here, [N] but just as a
little piece of Van Halen history, if I'm not mistaken, this song was actually recorded
using his old Ibanez Destroyer, not the typical Frankenstrat that you think of when you think
of early Van Halen stuff.
A lot of the stuff on Van Halen 1, basically anything that didn't use the tremolo, was
actually recorded on an old Ibanez Destroyer.
And in that case, he actually could have been strumming behind the tunamatic bridge.
I cannot confirm which one he's doing, but that's what I'm working with because that's
what I have.
But if you have a tunamatic bridge on a guitar, you might want to try strumming from high
strings to [D] low strings back there on that tunamatic.
So to kick the riff off, you're going to start off with a big slide down the low strings
on your guitar.
Start from no fret in particular, just start kind of high up on the neck.
I'm usually around 15 or 17, something like that.
Lightly hit the low E string and slide the hand down.
I've always thought that Eddie was kind of the king of awesome sounding slides, [E] like
pick scrapes and stuff.
And I think one of the keys to [F] getting a good sounding [G] slide out of your guitar right here
is [Eb] as you're going down the strings, gradually let the pressure off of your fingers too.
You don't want to be hanging on to the strings and stop somewhere because then you hear a
definite note out of it.
So as you slide [N] down the neck here, towards around the fifth fret, be letting the pressure
off of your fingers as you go.
Now there's some right hand magic that goes into making this riff sound so awesome, but
before we get into that, let's talk about just the basic positions of the left hand.
What you're going to do to start off with here is to fret the D and G strings here on
[B] fret number five, and then come up to fret number [Db] seven.
Same two strings.
[Abm] Both of them on five, both of them on seven.
[Db] [N] After this, what you're going to do is to lightly loosen your finger up.
Don't come off the strings or anything, just loosen it up a little bit.
Cover the rest of the strings with your remaining fingers.
And just give it a down and up strum.
You gotta chop it pretty hard.
It's not a super high gain tone he was using.
He really had to beat the crap out of the guitar to get that high gain kind of sound
out of it.
So don't be timid and barely graze the strings like that.
Really get in there and chop them.
So far we've got [Db] the two muted [Eb] chops.
After this, this is the part that a lot of people do a little bit differently, but I'm
going to show you what's up here.
You're going to fret now on the D, G, and B [Db] strings.
So you're snagging a third string here under your bar.
What you're going to do is you're going to strike all three of those strings,
[Gb] and then
hammer in to the eighth [N] fret B with your middle finger, and the ninth fret D with your ring finger.
[Ebm] [Eb] Like that right there.
Again, a lot of times I see people just do that or something like that.
You gotta do both of those strings hammering in.
[Ebm] After this, what you're going to do is to take this chord shape up a whole step.
So now I'm still doing my bar, it's just that I'm on fret number nine, and I'm going to
have my eleventh fret D and tenth [D] fret B string.
You've got to strike all three of those [Ab] strings, and [N] then take these fingers off.
So now I'm just barring D, G, and B on fret number nine.
[Eb] Strike all of it.
[Ebm] And that's pretty much all you've got to worry about left hand wise here.
You've got your two string bars on five and seven, [Db] your mutes, your hammered in chords,
[Ab] and coming up, [N] your big old slide.
Now like I said, I want to cover some of the right hand finesse in all this stuff too,
because if you just followed my instructions exactly like what I just said, you could end
up with something that sounds not very much like the original.
It could sound like this.
[Db] [Eb]
[Db] That's close, but that's not exactly it.
Eddie's right hand is a muting machine and one of the most critical parts to his sound.
Now I'm going to play it again, and from this angle you're going to see my right hand kind
of bouncing on and off the strings to selectively shut them down and let them ring out at certain times.
Watch real close here.
[Bb] [Eb]
See all those bounces I'm doing in there?
[B] That's what's going to make this sound a lot more articulate.
And again, all I'm doing here is just using the side of my palm and coming into the strings,
and just muting them like that.
The reverb tail kind of carries it over.
That way you hear the tail of the previous chord kind of filling in that gap right there.
Otherwise, it sounds very empty.
So basically what you're going to do here is to play your first set of bars here on
fret five, come in with a [Db] chop, then play your seventh fret bar.
So you've got five, chop, seven.
It's really brief.
It's not anything long like that.
Very quick.
You've got your two chops.
And then right here.
[Eb]
So you [Db] can see that after I strummed the chord and did the hammer [Ebm]-on, chop, [Ab] [Eb] chop, like that.
And again, those things make this all sound a whole lot more articulate.
Rather than this.
I'll be sure to put the [A] notation for where those chops are happening on the tab, so be
sure to watch very closely for that.
Again, it's kind of a finishing touch.
I guess throughout the [Abm] entire course of the riff, there's [Db] one, two, [Eb] three of them [Em] over
the course of the entire riff.
So be sure to really watch those and get them in place.
And that is all there is to it.
Again, it's pretty simple stuff, but it sounds so cool when you play it exactly like how
Eddie did it.
Thank you guys so much for watching this week's lesson.
Be sure to like this video and subscribe [N] to my channel.
You guys can follow me over on Instagram at Ben Eller Guitars and over on Facebook at
facebook.com slash UncleBenEller.
If you're interested in booking some one-on-one Skyplaces with me, be sure to drop me an email.
Ben Eller Guitars at gmail.com.
Let me know in the comment section below if there's another classic Van Halen riff or
solo or anything like that that you've always had trouble transcribing or finding a good tab of.
I really love going deep and analyzing Eddie's playing, so let me know anything you want
to see on future episodes.
Thanks again so much for
their entire catalog, but I still see a whole lot of people playing the main riff to Running
With The Devil by Van Halen incorrectly.
So let's check it out.
[B] [Db]
[Eb] [Db]
[Eb] [Db] [Eb]
[Db] [Ebm] [Cm]
[E]
[G] [E]
Hey there guys, and welcome to another installment of Weekend Wank Shop.
[B] Here's your good buddy, Uncle Ben.
Van Halen 1 changed the world of guitar as we know it.
It's easily one of the most important guitar records ever made, and I think it should be
required listening for everybody who plays.
That being said, I've always thought it was kind of funny that they chose to open the
record up with Running With The Devil, considering that it's probably the least ferocious guitar
song on the album.
It doesn't have any crazy tapping or anything like that on it.
Just kind of standard classic rock fare.
But with the best guitar tone, the main riff of this song isn't anything hard to play,
but I've seen so many bad tabs of this over the years.
So in my [Em] unending quest to rid the world of fake news guitar lessons, today we're going
to look at the real way to play that riff.
And as always, there's a full tab for this week's lesson over on my Instagram page.
Be sure to follow me over at Ben Eller Guitars, find the tab for this week's lesson, learn
how to play it, then upload a video of yourself shredding through it, along with the hashtag
Weekend Wank Shop.
So the first thing you're going to want to do here is [Eb] to tune your guitar down a half
[Ab] step to Eb, Ab, [F] Db, Bb, Db, and [G] Eb, like every other song on Van Halen 1.
I'll tell you, a big component that a lot of people miss out on when trying to capture
that Eddie sound is don't skimp out on that reverb.
[Eb] You've got to have a pretty significant amount of sauce on that tone to get it sounding right.
Now the first thing that you hear from Eddie's guitar is that weird, chimey squawk that happens
during the count-in.
Now I'm doing that by strumming behind the nut of my guitar right here, [N] but just as a
little piece of Van Halen history, if I'm not mistaken, this song was actually recorded
using his old Ibanez Destroyer, not the typical Frankenstrat that you think of when you think
of early Van Halen stuff.
A lot of the stuff on Van Halen 1, basically anything that didn't use the tremolo, was
actually recorded on an old Ibanez Destroyer.
And in that case, he actually could have been strumming behind the tunamatic bridge.
I cannot confirm which one he's doing, but that's what I'm working with because that's
what I have.
But if you have a tunamatic bridge on a guitar, you might want to try strumming from high
strings to [D] low strings back there on that tunamatic.
So to kick the riff off, you're going to start off with a big slide down the low strings
on your guitar.
Start from no fret in particular, just start kind of high up on the neck.
I'm usually around 15 or 17, something like that.
Lightly hit the low E string and slide the hand down.
I've always thought that Eddie was kind of the king of awesome sounding slides, [E] like
pick scrapes and stuff.
And I think one of the keys to [F] getting a good sounding [G] slide out of your guitar right here
is [Eb] as you're going down the strings, gradually let the pressure off of your fingers too.
You don't want to be hanging on to the strings and stop somewhere because then you hear a
definite note out of it.
So as you slide [N] down the neck here, towards around the fifth fret, be letting the pressure
off of your fingers as you go.
Now there's some right hand magic that goes into making this riff sound so awesome, but
before we get into that, let's talk about just the basic positions of the left hand.
What you're going to do to start off with here is to fret the D and G strings here on
[B] fret number five, and then come up to fret number [Db] seven.
Same two strings.
[Abm] Both of them on five, both of them on seven.
[Db] [N] After this, what you're going to do is to lightly loosen your finger up.
Don't come off the strings or anything, just loosen it up a little bit.
Cover the rest of the strings with your remaining fingers.
And just give it a down and up strum.
You gotta chop it pretty hard.
It's not a super high gain tone he was using.
He really had to beat the crap out of the guitar to get that high gain kind of sound
out of it.
So don't be timid and barely graze the strings like that.
Really get in there and chop them.
So far we've got [Db] the two muted [Eb] chops.
After this, this is the part that a lot of people do a little bit differently, but I'm
going to show you what's up here.
You're going to fret now on the D, G, and B [Db] strings.
So you're snagging a third string here under your bar.
What you're going to do is you're going to strike all three of those strings,
[Gb] and then
hammer in to the eighth [N] fret B with your middle finger, and the ninth fret D with your ring finger.
[Ebm] [Eb] Like that right there.
Again, a lot of times I see people just do that or something like that.
You gotta do both of those strings hammering in.
[Ebm] After this, what you're going to do is to take this chord shape up a whole step.
So now I'm still doing my bar, it's just that I'm on fret number nine, and I'm going to
have my eleventh fret D and tenth [D] fret B string.
You've got to strike all three of those [Ab] strings, and [N] then take these fingers off.
So now I'm just barring D, G, and B on fret number nine.
[Eb] Strike all of it.
[Ebm] And that's pretty much all you've got to worry about left hand wise here.
You've got your two string bars on five and seven, [Db] your mutes, your hammered in chords,
[Ab] and coming up, [N] your big old slide.
Now like I said, I want to cover some of the right hand finesse in all this stuff too,
because if you just followed my instructions exactly like what I just said, you could end
up with something that sounds not very much like the original.
It could sound like this.
[Db] [Eb]
[Db] That's close, but that's not exactly it.
Eddie's right hand is a muting machine and one of the most critical parts to his sound.
Now I'm going to play it again, and from this angle you're going to see my right hand kind
of bouncing on and off the strings to selectively shut them down and let them ring out at certain times.
Watch real close here.
[Bb] [Eb]
See all those bounces I'm doing in there?
[B] That's what's going to make this sound a lot more articulate.
And again, all I'm doing here is just using the side of my palm and coming into the strings,
and just muting them like that.
The reverb tail kind of carries it over.
That way you hear the tail of the previous chord kind of filling in that gap right there.
Otherwise, it sounds very empty.
So basically what you're going to do here is to play your first set of bars here on
fret five, come in with a [Db] chop, then play your seventh fret bar.
So you've got five, chop, seven.
It's really brief.
It's not anything long like that.
Very quick.
You've got your two chops.
And then right here.
[Eb]
So you [Db] can see that after I strummed the chord and did the hammer [Ebm]-on, chop, [Ab] [Eb] chop, like that.
And again, those things make this all sound a whole lot more articulate.
Rather than this.
I'll be sure to put the [A] notation for where those chops are happening on the tab, so be
sure to watch very closely for that.
Again, it's kind of a finishing touch.
I guess throughout the [Abm] entire course of the riff, there's [Db] one, two, [Eb] three of them [Em] over
the course of the entire riff.
So be sure to really watch those and get them in place.
And that is all there is to it.
Again, it's pretty simple stuff, but it sounds so cool when you play it exactly like how
Eddie did it.
Thank you guys so much for watching this week's lesson.
Be sure to like this video and subscribe [N] to my channel.
You guys can follow me over on Instagram at Ben Eller Guitars and over on Facebook at
facebook.com slash UncleBenEller.
If you're interested in booking some one-on-one Skyplaces with me, be sure to drop me an email.
Ben Eller Guitars at gmail.com.
Let me know in the comment section below if there's another classic Van Halen riff or
solo or anything like that that you've always had trouble transcribing or finding a good tab of.
I really love going deep and analyzing Eddie's playing, so let me know anything you want
to see on future episodes.
Thanks again so much for
Key:
Db
Eb
Ebm
B
Ab
Db
Eb
Ebm
It's the first track on their landmark debut album, and it's one of the easiest songs in
their entire catalog, but I still see a whole lot of people playing the main riff to Running
With The Devil by Van Halen incorrectly.
So let's check it out. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _ [Db] _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ [Db] _ _ _
[Eb] _ _ _ _ [Db] _ _ [Eb] _ _
_ _ [Db] _ _ _ [Ebm] _ _ [Cm] _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Hey there guys, and welcome to another installment of Weekend Wank Shop.
[B] Here's your good buddy, Uncle Ben.
Van Halen 1 changed the world of guitar as we know it.
It's easily one of the most important guitar records ever made, and I think it should be
required listening for everybody who plays.
That being said, I've always thought it was kind of funny that they chose to open the
record up with Running With The Devil, considering that it's probably the least ferocious guitar
song on the album.
It doesn't have any crazy tapping or anything like that on it.
Just kind of standard classic rock fare.
But with the best guitar tone, the main riff of this song isn't anything hard to play,
but I've seen so many bad tabs of this over the years.
So in my [Em] unending quest to rid the world of fake news guitar lessons, today we're going
to look at the real way to play that riff.
And as always, there's a full tab for this week's lesson over on my Instagram page.
Be sure to follow me over at Ben Eller Guitars, find the tab for this week's lesson, learn
how to play it, then upload a video of yourself shredding through it, along with the hashtag
Weekend Wank Shop.
So the first thing you're going to want to do here is [Eb] to tune your guitar down a half
[Ab] step to Eb, Ab, [F] Db, Bb, Db, and [G] Eb, like every other song on Van Halen 1.
I'll tell you, a big component that a lot of people miss out on when trying to capture
that Eddie sound is don't skimp out on that reverb.
[Eb] You've got to have a pretty significant amount of sauce on that tone to get it sounding right.
Now the first thing that you hear from Eddie's guitar is that weird, chimey squawk that happens
during the count-in.
Now I'm doing that by strumming behind the nut of my guitar right here, [N] but just as a
little piece of Van Halen history, if I'm not mistaken, this song was actually recorded
using his old Ibanez Destroyer, not the typical Frankenstrat that you think of when you think
of early Van Halen stuff.
A lot of the stuff on Van Halen 1, basically anything that didn't use the tremolo, was
actually recorded on an old Ibanez Destroyer.
And in that case, he actually could have been strumming behind the tunamatic bridge.
I cannot confirm which one he's doing, but that's what I'm working with because that's
what I have.
But if you have a tunamatic bridge on a guitar, you might want to try strumming from high
strings to [D] low strings back there on that tunamatic.
So to kick the riff off, you're going to start off with a big slide down the low strings
on your guitar.
Start from no fret in particular, just start kind of high up on the neck.
I'm usually around 15 or 17, something like that.
Lightly hit the low E string and slide the hand down.
I've always thought that Eddie was kind of the king of awesome sounding slides, [E] like
pick scrapes and stuff.
And I think one of the keys to [F] getting a good sounding [G] slide out of your guitar right here
is [Eb] as you're going down the strings, gradually let the pressure off of your fingers too.
You don't want to be hanging on to the strings and stop somewhere because then you hear a
definite note out of it.
So as you slide [N] down the neck here, towards around the fifth fret, be letting the pressure
off of your fingers as you go.
Now there's some right hand magic that goes into making this riff sound so awesome, but
before we get into that, let's talk about just the basic positions of the left hand.
What you're going to do to start off with here is to fret the D and G strings here on
[B] fret number five, and then come up to fret number [Db] seven.
Same two strings.
[Abm] Both of them on five, both of them on seven.
[Db] _ _ [N] After this, what you're going to do is to lightly loosen your finger up.
Don't come off the strings or anything, just loosen it up a little bit.
Cover the rest of the strings with your remaining fingers.
And just give it a down and up strum.
You gotta chop it pretty hard.
It's not a super high gain tone he was using.
He really had to beat the crap out of the guitar to get that high gain kind of sound
out of it.
So don't be timid and barely graze the strings like that.
Really get in there and chop them.
So far we've got [Db] _ the two muted [Eb] chops.
After this, this is the part that a lot of people do a little bit differently, but I'm
going to show you what's up here.
You're going to fret now on the D, G, and B [Db] strings.
So you're snagging a third string here under your bar.
What you're going to do is you're going to strike all three of those strings, _ _
[Gb] and then
hammer in to the eighth [N] fret B with your middle finger, and the ninth fret D with your ring finger.
[Ebm] _ [Eb] Like that right there.
Again, a lot of times I see people just do that or something like that.
You gotta do both of those strings hammering in.
[Ebm] _ After this, what you're going to do is to take this chord shape up a whole step.
So now I'm still doing my bar, it's just that I'm on fret number nine, and I'm going to
have my eleventh fret D and tenth [D] fret B string.
You've got to strike all three of those [Ab] strings, and [N] then take these fingers off.
So now I'm just barring D, G, and B on fret number nine.
[Eb] Strike all of it.
_ [Ebm] _ And that's pretty much all you've got to worry about left hand wise here.
You've got your two string bars on five and seven, [Db] your mutes, your hammered in chords,
[Ab] and coming up, [N] your big old slide.
Now like I said, I want to cover some of the right hand finesse in all this stuff too,
because if you just followed my instructions exactly like what I just said, you could end
up with something that sounds not very much like the original.
It could sound like this.
[Db] _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ [Db] _ _ That's close, but that's not exactly it.
Eddie's right hand is a muting machine and one of the most critical parts to his sound.
Now I'm going to play it again, and from this angle you're going to see my right hand kind
of bouncing on and off the strings to selectively shut them down and let them ring out at certain times.
Watch real close here.
_ _ [Bb] _ [Eb] _
See all those bounces I'm doing in there?
[B] That's what's going to make this sound a lot more articulate.
And again, all I'm doing here is just using the side of my palm and coming into the strings,
and just muting them like that.
The reverb tail kind of carries it over.
That way you hear the tail of the previous chord kind of filling in that gap right there.
Otherwise, it sounds very empty.
So basically what you're going to do here is to play your first set of bars here on
fret five, come in with a [Db] chop, then play your seventh fret bar.
So you've got five, chop, seven.
It's really brief.
It's not anything long like that.
Very quick. _
_ You've got your two chops.
And then right here.
[Eb] _ _
So you [Db] can see that after I strummed the chord and did the hammer [Ebm]-on, chop, [Ab] _ [Eb] chop, like that.
And again, those things make this all sound a whole lot more articulate.
_ Rather than this. _ _ _
_ _ I'll be sure to put the [A] notation for where those chops are happening on the tab, so be
sure to watch very closely for that.
Again, it's kind of a finishing touch.
I guess throughout the [Abm] entire course of the riff, there's [Db] one, _ two, [Eb] three of them [Em] over
the course of the entire riff.
So be sure to really watch those and get them in place.
And that is all there is to it.
Again, it's pretty simple stuff, but it sounds so cool when you play it exactly like how
Eddie did it.
Thank you guys so much for watching this week's lesson.
Be sure to like this video and subscribe [N] to my channel.
You guys can follow me over on Instagram at Ben Eller Guitars and over on Facebook at
facebook.com slash UncleBenEller.
If you're interested in booking some one-on-one Skyplaces with me, be sure to drop me an email.
Ben Eller Guitars at gmail.com.
Let me know in the comment section below if there's another classic Van Halen riff or
solo or anything like that that you've always had trouble transcribing or finding a good tab of.
I really love going deep and analyzing Eddie's playing, so let me know anything you want
to see on future episodes.
Thanks again so much for
their entire catalog, but I still see a whole lot of people playing the main riff to Running
With The Devil by Van Halen incorrectly.
So let's check it out. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _ [Db] _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ [Db] _ _ _
[Eb] _ _ _ _ [Db] _ _ [Eb] _ _
_ _ [Db] _ _ _ [Ebm] _ _ [Cm] _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Hey there guys, and welcome to another installment of Weekend Wank Shop.
[B] Here's your good buddy, Uncle Ben.
Van Halen 1 changed the world of guitar as we know it.
It's easily one of the most important guitar records ever made, and I think it should be
required listening for everybody who plays.
That being said, I've always thought it was kind of funny that they chose to open the
record up with Running With The Devil, considering that it's probably the least ferocious guitar
song on the album.
It doesn't have any crazy tapping or anything like that on it.
Just kind of standard classic rock fare.
But with the best guitar tone, the main riff of this song isn't anything hard to play,
but I've seen so many bad tabs of this over the years.
So in my [Em] unending quest to rid the world of fake news guitar lessons, today we're going
to look at the real way to play that riff.
And as always, there's a full tab for this week's lesson over on my Instagram page.
Be sure to follow me over at Ben Eller Guitars, find the tab for this week's lesson, learn
how to play it, then upload a video of yourself shredding through it, along with the hashtag
Weekend Wank Shop.
So the first thing you're going to want to do here is [Eb] to tune your guitar down a half
[Ab] step to Eb, Ab, [F] Db, Bb, Db, and [G] Eb, like every other song on Van Halen 1.
I'll tell you, a big component that a lot of people miss out on when trying to capture
that Eddie sound is don't skimp out on that reverb.
[Eb] You've got to have a pretty significant amount of sauce on that tone to get it sounding right.
Now the first thing that you hear from Eddie's guitar is that weird, chimey squawk that happens
during the count-in.
Now I'm doing that by strumming behind the nut of my guitar right here, [N] but just as a
little piece of Van Halen history, if I'm not mistaken, this song was actually recorded
using his old Ibanez Destroyer, not the typical Frankenstrat that you think of when you think
of early Van Halen stuff.
A lot of the stuff on Van Halen 1, basically anything that didn't use the tremolo, was
actually recorded on an old Ibanez Destroyer.
And in that case, he actually could have been strumming behind the tunamatic bridge.
I cannot confirm which one he's doing, but that's what I'm working with because that's
what I have.
But if you have a tunamatic bridge on a guitar, you might want to try strumming from high
strings to [D] low strings back there on that tunamatic.
So to kick the riff off, you're going to start off with a big slide down the low strings
on your guitar.
Start from no fret in particular, just start kind of high up on the neck.
I'm usually around 15 or 17, something like that.
Lightly hit the low E string and slide the hand down.
I've always thought that Eddie was kind of the king of awesome sounding slides, [E] like
pick scrapes and stuff.
And I think one of the keys to [F] getting a good sounding [G] slide out of your guitar right here
is [Eb] as you're going down the strings, gradually let the pressure off of your fingers too.
You don't want to be hanging on to the strings and stop somewhere because then you hear a
definite note out of it.
So as you slide [N] down the neck here, towards around the fifth fret, be letting the pressure
off of your fingers as you go.
Now there's some right hand magic that goes into making this riff sound so awesome, but
before we get into that, let's talk about just the basic positions of the left hand.
What you're going to do to start off with here is to fret the D and G strings here on
[B] fret number five, and then come up to fret number [Db] seven.
Same two strings.
[Abm] Both of them on five, both of them on seven.
[Db] _ _ [N] After this, what you're going to do is to lightly loosen your finger up.
Don't come off the strings or anything, just loosen it up a little bit.
Cover the rest of the strings with your remaining fingers.
And just give it a down and up strum.
You gotta chop it pretty hard.
It's not a super high gain tone he was using.
He really had to beat the crap out of the guitar to get that high gain kind of sound
out of it.
So don't be timid and barely graze the strings like that.
Really get in there and chop them.
So far we've got [Db] _ the two muted [Eb] chops.
After this, this is the part that a lot of people do a little bit differently, but I'm
going to show you what's up here.
You're going to fret now on the D, G, and B [Db] strings.
So you're snagging a third string here under your bar.
What you're going to do is you're going to strike all three of those strings, _ _
[Gb] and then
hammer in to the eighth [N] fret B with your middle finger, and the ninth fret D with your ring finger.
[Ebm] _ [Eb] Like that right there.
Again, a lot of times I see people just do that or something like that.
You gotta do both of those strings hammering in.
[Ebm] _ After this, what you're going to do is to take this chord shape up a whole step.
So now I'm still doing my bar, it's just that I'm on fret number nine, and I'm going to
have my eleventh fret D and tenth [D] fret B string.
You've got to strike all three of those [Ab] strings, and [N] then take these fingers off.
So now I'm just barring D, G, and B on fret number nine.
[Eb] Strike all of it.
_ [Ebm] _ And that's pretty much all you've got to worry about left hand wise here.
You've got your two string bars on five and seven, [Db] your mutes, your hammered in chords,
[Ab] and coming up, [N] your big old slide.
Now like I said, I want to cover some of the right hand finesse in all this stuff too,
because if you just followed my instructions exactly like what I just said, you could end
up with something that sounds not very much like the original.
It could sound like this.
[Db] _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ [Db] _ _ That's close, but that's not exactly it.
Eddie's right hand is a muting machine and one of the most critical parts to his sound.
Now I'm going to play it again, and from this angle you're going to see my right hand kind
of bouncing on and off the strings to selectively shut them down and let them ring out at certain times.
Watch real close here.
_ _ [Bb] _ [Eb] _
See all those bounces I'm doing in there?
[B] That's what's going to make this sound a lot more articulate.
And again, all I'm doing here is just using the side of my palm and coming into the strings,
and just muting them like that.
The reverb tail kind of carries it over.
That way you hear the tail of the previous chord kind of filling in that gap right there.
Otherwise, it sounds very empty.
So basically what you're going to do here is to play your first set of bars here on
fret five, come in with a [Db] chop, then play your seventh fret bar.
So you've got five, chop, seven.
It's really brief.
It's not anything long like that.
Very quick. _
_ You've got your two chops.
And then right here.
[Eb] _ _
So you [Db] can see that after I strummed the chord and did the hammer [Ebm]-on, chop, [Ab] _ [Eb] chop, like that.
And again, those things make this all sound a whole lot more articulate.
_ Rather than this. _ _ _
_ _ I'll be sure to put the [A] notation for where those chops are happening on the tab, so be
sure to watch very closely for that.
Again, it's kind of a finishing touch.
I guess throughout the [Abm] entire course of the riff, there's [Db] one, _ two, [Eb] three of them [Em] over
the course of the entire riff.
So be sure to really watch those and get them in place.
And that is all there is to it.
Again, it's pretty simple stuff, but it sounds so cool when you play it exactly like how
Eddie did it.
Thank you guys so much for watching this week's lesson.
Be sure to like this video and subscribe [N] to my channel.
You guys can follow me over on Instagram at Ben Eller Guitars and over on Facebook at
facebook.com slash UncleBenEller.
If you're interested in booking some one-on-one Skyplaces with me, be sure to drop me an email.
Ben Eller Guitars at gmail.com.
Let me know in the comment section below if there's another classic Van Halen riff or
solo or anything like that that you've always had trouble transcribing or finding a good tab of.
I really love going deep and analyzing Eddie's playing, so let me know anything you want
to see on future episodes.
Thanks again so much for