The Man Who Invented Tapping - Didn't really know where to post this...

mamma mia, fantasticooooooo..grazie mille di aver pubblicato questo link!!!

W O W !
(What have I to do to profile this?)

Nope, '65 was nearly a decade too late! Quote from my site, frugalguitarist.com

Quote

The earliest recorded examples were by the late Jimmie Webster in 1958 who 6 six years earlier in 1952 published a instruction manual for the technique titled 'Touch Method for Electric and Amplified Spanish Guitar'. However, Jimmie learned this technique from none other than Harry DeArmond, inventor of the first commercially available attachable guitar pickup in the 1930’s, who created the technique to show off the sensitivity of his pickups. You can hear some Jimmie Webster recordings at a posthumous tribute MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/jimmiewebster

Sorry to burst the bubble, but Howard Reports said in a book from Guitar Player in the US that he was tapping in the 1950's.

Very cool! I've read that Pagganini was tapping on violin hundreds of years ago, but who knows where it really started.
Imagine if Pagganini, Bach, Mozart, Hendrix all were around with the KPA! Unreal I'm sure.

Viobrace, Thanks for sharing it's very cool regardless of who did it first. It certainly predates Van Halen

Yep, this is awesome stuff viabcroce - proves that creativity pre-dates technological advancements ;). I for one used to think that Van Halen invented the technique :), but that was 10 years ago - and Im older and wiser.

In the 1970s, Billy Gibbons did it before Van Halen, and so did Lee Ritenour (?) at the end of a solo on a Steely Dan song. Was it "Royal Scam?"

FWIW - I knew guys who actually stopped playing when they heard that first Van Halen record. To them, it was suddenly impossible to be a Rock lead guitarist.

It took awhile for people to find out he had both hands on the fingerboard - it sounded superhuman, until that was known. but, even then, compared to the few mainstream riffs that proceeded it, it was like a line in the sand - this was the Future of Rock guitar.

The apocryphal information about the Southern California guitar scene in the mid to late '70s is that many people were doing it, and Van Halen was the first band with a record deal that included a guitarist who did it. I'm not suggesting the guy isn't an absolute master at what he does - just passing on what has been said by other guitarists of that scene.

I learned from Harvey Mandel here in Chicago...before EVH.

I bet the Italian doctor was the first to be televised, using the technique. He was wonderful! Two of my modern favorites, using the technique are Tosin Abasi, and Michael Bianco.

Grazie tante per questo meraviglioso documento!!!!

Incredible playing and skills for a radiologist!!! an amateur player at best... it is really inspiring.

Thank you again!!!!

Wasn't Van Halen the first guy that did it with both hands, i.e. his left hand tapping lower while the right remained at the same place? As opposed to the traditional my right hand is playing higher pitches and my left hand is fixed?

I could have sworn I read about Satch saying that.

No, not the first. He was playing it on a higher level than had appeared on a record before.

Excerpts from Wikipedia "Tapping"

Roy Smeck used the two-handed tapping technique on a Ukulele in the 1932 film Club House Party.[2] Jimmie Webster made recordings in the 1950s using the method of two-handed tapping he described in 'Touch Method for Electric and Amplified Spanish Guitar', published in 1952. Webster was a student of electric pickup designer Harry DeArmond, who developed two-handed tapping as a way to demonstrate the sensitivity of his pickups. The two-handed tapping technique was also known and occasionally used by many 1950s and 1960s jazz guitarists such as Barney Kessel, who was an early supporter of Emmett Chapman.

In August 1969, Los Angeles jazz guitarist Emmett Chapman discovered a new way of two-handed tapping with both hands held perpendicular to the neck from opposite sides, thus enabling equal counterpoint capabilities for each hand for the first time. Chapman redesigned his 9-string long-scale electric guitar, calling it the Electric Stick. In 1974 he founded Stick Enterprises, Inc. and began building instruments for other musicians. With over 5,000 instruments produced as of 2006, The Chapman Stick is the most popular extant dedicated tapping instrument. Chapman influenced several two-handed tapping guitarists, including Steve Lynch of the band Autograph, and Jennifer Batten.

Rock Players:
One of the first rock guitarists to record using the two-handed tapping technique was Steve Hackett from Genesis. Two examples of Hackett's complex Bach like tapping can be heard on the song "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight", from 1973, and "The Return of the Giant Hogweed", from 1971.

Harvey Mandel utilized extensive two-handed tapping techniques on his 1973 album Shangrenade. Ritchie Blackmore has said that he saw Harvey Mandel utilize two-handed fretboard tapping as early as 1968 at the Whisky a Go Go.

Randy Resnick of the Pure Food and Drug Act used two-handed tapping techniques extensively in his performances and recordings between 1969 and 1974. Resnick also recorded using the two-handed tapping technique in 1974 on the John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers album "Latest Edition" and has said that he was attempting to duplicate the legato of John Coltrane's "Sheets of Sound".

Other guitarists such as Frank Zappa, Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, Brian May from Queen, Duane Allman from The Allman Brothers Band, Larry Carlton (Kid Charlemagne 1976), and Leslie West from Mountain were using the two-handed tapping technique in the early and mid 1970s as well. Ace Frehley and Frank Zappa used a guitar pick for their style of two-handed tapping.
Although he makes no claim to inventing the technique, Eddie Van Halen did the most to popularize the two-handed tapping, especially for rock genres. He influenced many guitarists incorporate it into their repertoire of techniques. He claims that seeing Jimmy Page perform his guitar solo in "Heartbreaker" inspired him to experiment with two-handed tapping. He remarked:
"I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his ‘Heartbreaker’ solo back in 1971…He was doing a pull-off to an open string and I thought...I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around?"

Viva la Wikipedia!

Interesting stuff! Thanks Gianfranco for posting the video that started this discussion. I'd love to see other posts like this.