The tapping and rock guitar master takes a melodic shred solo over Jason’s Flying High.

Rock legend and two-handed tapping virtuoso Reb Beach presents his guitar trademarks as he takes a melodic shred solo over Jason Sidwell’s uptempo rock track, Flying High. Jon Bishop is your guide.

For many music fans, Reb Beach needs no introduction as he’s been an integral part of American music since the late 80s. This ranges from session work with Chaka Khan and The Bee Gees, stints with Night Ranger and Dokken, projects with The Mob (2005) and Black Swan (2020) through to his two most prominent gigs, Winger (1988-now) and Whitesnake (2002-now). Add in his popular Cutting Loose guitar instructional video (1991) and recent instrumental album, A View From The Inside (2020), and Reb has had a fruitful music career for sure.

So it’s with great pleasure that GT presents Reb this month with an uptempo rocker by Jason that he performs not only with memorable and melodic phrases but also some seriously impressive two-hand tapping.

Clocking in at a brisk 160bpm, Flying High has a classic chugging eighth-note rock feel. The track is constructed using chords derived from harmonising the notes in E Natural minor (E-F#-G-A-B-C-D). This creates the chords of E Minor, F# Diminished, G Major, A Minor, B Minor, C Major and D Major. Because these chords come from E Natural Minor, Reb largely keeps to this scale and its reduced version, E Minor Pentatonic (E-G-A-B-D). For you to navigate the backing track and try out some ideas of your own, we have provided diagrams for these two scales. The first is the popular shape one version of E Minor Pentatonic which is a great choice for generally rocking out and provides a solid home base. The second is for the E Natural Minor scale which adds two colour tones, F# (2nd) and C (Minor 6th) to the E Minor Pentatonic scale.

The use of a theme or motif is a strong way to frame an instrumental, providing a platform from which to branch out. Here, Reb opts for the perfect 5th interval as it creates a triumphant sound; film composer John Williams has used the perfect 5th for many of his most famous themes including Star Wars,

ET and Superman. Reb has created contrasting themes for the verse, pre-chorus, chorus and middle sections and these themes are repeated in the relevant places so the listener can latch onto them. Reb also adds slight variations the second time round to maintain interest.

The solo makes use of many exciting techniques such as natural harmonics, whammy bar pitch bending and vibrato, and finger vibrato. To enhance these, Reb uses lots of string bends and finger slides which further add to his musical individuality. Of course, there is also considerable use of Reb’s signature two-handed tapping which is highlighted and explained in the video discussion after his performance. To illuminate this, we have tabbed out six examples which act as further sources from which to learn, and to develop your own playing.

Hopefully there will be a new technique, lick or phrase in here for you to perfect. If you find one you like then memorise it and use it in future, especially if fast and impressive tapping is what’s required. Once you feel you have got some or all of Reb’s solo under your fingers, why not try creating a solo of your own? Check out the chord chart for the changes and, most importantly, use your musical intuition. Have fun and see you next time!

Next issue: Reb’s Whitesnake six-string partner, Joel Hoekstra solos on Jason’s track, Slither with Blues scale/Diminished scale usage and hybrid picked/tapped phrasing.

“This track is not too complicated. It’s a Minor Pentatonic rock thing, which is right up my ally!” REB BEACH