Fast shuffle/boogie rhythms

Eddie Van Halen: 12 Techniques Behind His Riffing Rhythm Work | TAB

BY GP Editors

August 19, 2015

It’s well established that Eddie Van Halen is one of rock guitar’s most influential and imitated lead guitarists.

But what’s often ignored is that he is also one of the genre’s greatest rhythm stylists.

For that reason—and to celebrate Van Halen’s ongoing North American tour—we’re going to look at the many facets of Eddie’s riff-based approach to rhythm.

TRIADS AND SUS4 SHAPES
One of Eddie’s rhythmic hallmarks is that he has rarely made power chords the focal point of his riffs. Instead, he opts for triads and suspended chords.

Typically he’s played these voicings on strings 2–4 over bassist Michael Anthony’s (and now Wolfgang Van Halen’s) low E-string thumps. This pedal-point effect—the result of chords moving against a single, droning bass note [ FIGURE 1 ]—created dramatic modal fluctuations in early VH cuts like “Runnin’ with the Devil,” courtesy of triads from both E major and E minor (as opposed to a single key center).

FIGURE 1

Eddie often explored suspended chords in conjunction with pedal-point riffs [ FIGURE 2 ], as in “Dance the Night Away.” Note that in contrast to rock’s ubiquitous power chord, the three-note chords in both of these figures sound pretty terrible when played with an oversaturated tone.

FIGURE 2

ARPEGGIATED RIFFS
More than 25 years after the release of Van Halen, the opening riff in “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love”—an arpeggiated Am-F-G5 passage played with palm-muted downstrokes—is still a favorite among beginning and intermediate pickers.

FIGURE 3 illustrates a similar riff. Note, however, that “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” is one of the few purely arpeggiated signature riffs in the Van Halen discography. Eddie has tended to reserve this technique for short accompaniment segments like the one in “5150.”

FIGURE 3

Try playing FIGURE 4 with economy picking: that is, use a single stroke to tackle notes on adjacent strings, as indicated.

FIGURE 4

DOMINANT 9ths
Dominant 9th chords figure prominently in Van Halen’s early rhythm work. As with the previously discussed triads, these more complex chords sound like crap when played with too much distortion.

On Van Halen’s first album, Eddie used E9 [E-G#-B-D-F#, FIGURE 5 ]—one of the least metal-sounding harmonies in existence—as the ending chord for “You Really Got Me,” “I’m the One” and “Ice Cream Man” The 9th chord is also the harmonic basis for one of Van Halen’s first original hits, “Jamie’s Cryin’.”

FIGURE 5

FIGURE 6 recalls the tune’s chord partials, muted scratches, arpeggios and single-note moves.

FIGURE 6

FAST SHUFFLE/BOOGIE RHYTHMS

In the Seventies, stateside hard-rock acts like Aerosmith, Kiss and Ted Nugent played tunes heavily rooted in blues and boogie riffs. As fans of blues-based rock acts like Led Zeppelin and Cream, Van Halen certainly weren’t immune to this influence.

One thing that distinguished them, however, was the breakneck speed—tempos often reached a blazing 300 bpm—at which they played such riffs, as evidence on Van Halen’s “I’m the One” and the Women and Children First track “Loss of Control,” both of which hinted at in FIGURES 7 and 8, respectively, as well as 1984 ’s “Hot for Teacher.”

FIGURE 7

FIGURE 8

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