Van Halen – Dreams Guitar Solo Lesson

In this "famous solo" lesson we are going to take a look at the incredible solos for "Dreams" by Van Halen.

These solos are classic Eddie Van Halen through and through. It is just amazing how well they are constructed both musically and technically.

In this Dreams guitar solo lesson I will show you how to play both of these solos note-for-note.

The main solo uses natural harmonics, tapped harmonics, bends, slides, tapping and tremolo picking to create a highly musical yet very exciting solo. Eddie Van Halen is simply the best at being able to create a guitar solo that you could hum in your head after the first listen even though it still contains virtuosic technique.

You really can't go wrong trying to master these solos. Even you can add just a little bit of the magic found in these solos to your own playing, you will go far.

Just like I state in the video, one of hardest and uncommon techniques found in the main solo is the tap harmonics. They are made even more difficult if you have any nails used for fingerpicking on your right hand. The best technique for these is to hammer straight down onto the string. It isn't your traditional hammer though. It feels more like you are popping the string directly over the fret than pushing into it. Try smacking the top of a table with your fingertip very quickly to get a feel for it. The goal is for it to be very quick with the least amount of time contacting the string as possible.

The second solo starts with some nice melodies played across a few strings before launching into a fast tapping sequence again. Once again even though the tapped notes are flying by at a million miles and hour, it still sounds very musical.

A quick word about the tapping sequences in both solos. If you have never done any tapping before you will be surprised about how much more difficult the tapping licks sound than they actually are to play. Most of them contain a simple repeated pattern that once mastered, is very easy to get up to full speed.

So I hope you guys enjoy learning these classic solos by Eddie Van Halen!

Carl...

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Van Halen - Dreams Guitar Solo Lesson