Check out these three easy Van Halen riffs from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with this free lesson and you will be rockin’ these killer riffs tonight!
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson. Today I’ve got three more Van Halen riffs for you and these ones aren’t too terribly tough to play and very recognizable fun riffs to play. So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these.
Van Halen Riff-1 Ain’t Talkin Bout Love
All right so the first one we’re going to look at is the opening riff from Ain’t Talkin
Bout’ Love and for this he’s using like a phaser and I kind of messed around with trying to emulate that sound and I’ve never really been great with using effects and stuff so I just never really got that tone; so I’m just gonna show you how to play it and it sounds good without the phaser, but if you want to get that sound like he had you would need to use the phaser. All right so for this we’re going to start off with just a regular A minor chord; so A string is open, I’m on the second fret of the D string with my second finger, second fret of the G string with my third finger, first fret of the B string with my first finger and the high E string is open. So this is all heavily palm muted and we start off we pick A, D B and G strings and this is just all eighth notes, so one and two, and then on the downbeat of three we pick the E string open and then we’re going to take our first finger and just barre it on the first fret of the B string and the high E string and we’re gonna pick and on the and of three we pick the first fret of the E string to the first fret of the B string… Then on measure two we’re going to take our third finger and we’re just gonna bring it up here and we’re gonna barre the third fret of the first and second string; so the high E and the B string and that’s beat one and then for downbeat of two we’re gonna take your second finger we’re gonna bring it up to the third fret of the low E string and then we’re going to roll that up to pick up the third fret of the A string, and this is two and three and, and then first finger to the second fret of the A string, four and, and that’s the first two measures which is basically the whole thing… and then it just it just repeats…
Runnin With The Devil
All right so next we’re going to look at Runnin With The Devil and this is the very intro of the song. So it starts off there’s like the sound of a horn and then it just goes to the bass doing that… So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna rest one two three and then on the downbeat of four we’re gonna come here to the 17th fret and we’re gonna pick that and slide out of it… so one two three four and then on the second measure starting on the downbeat of one put our first finger and we’re going to barre it so it’s going across the fifth fret of the D, G and B string and then we’re gonna we’re gonna pick that and then move it up to the seventh fret. Now you could go with your third finger or just your first finger and that so that’s the downbeat of two and then that’s tied to beat three, which is an eighth note so it’s like one and two three and, and then for two sixteenth notes of the and of four… Now with my first finger still here I’m just going to take my other fingers and just lay them across the strings so that way I can just get this quick and we just we don’t want to press you just want to touch so you get that kind of percussive sound. And then on the next measure the we start off we’re still barring here at the seventh fret on the D, G and B string and we’re going to pick that and then we’re going to hammer down our second finger onto the eighth fret of the B string third finger onto the ninth fret of the D string and then we’re going to move that up a whole step so now we’re barring at nine second fingers on the tenth fret and third fingers on the 11th fret pick that and then just take those two fingers off there on the ninth… And then we just come back up to 17 and slide out of it again and just repeats…
Van Halen Riff-3 Panama
All right then the last one we’re going to look at is a riff from Panama and that’s why i’m using this guitar because this is actually got a whammy bar dive and I wanted to be able to do that. Now if you don’t have whammy bar you don’t have to we’ll kind of show an alternative way. So for this we’re going to start off we’re going to be doing this E major; so first finger is on the seventh fret of the A string and then third finger is barring the ninth fret of the D, G and B string. So we rest on one and then on the and of one we just hit the D, G and B string and it’s one and two and, and then we pedal just the A string… one and two and, and then on the downbeat of three we’re going to make this into E suspended four (Esus4) and we’re just going to take our pinky and we’re going to pick up the 10th fret of the B string and everything else stays the same, back to two pedals and then this B. So when we transition from that your third finger is here on the ninth fret starting at the D string so we’re just going to keep that there, but roll it up so your clearing the other two strings and now your second finger will go onto the eighth fret of the G string and your first finger onto the seventh fret of the B string and that’s the first measure. And then starting on the second measure we’re back to the E chord again and then Esus4 and back to the B again and that’s the first two measures and half of the riff.
Then you’re supposed to start on that seven and slide down to the fifth fret, but I rarely do that right. So basically we’re gonna take this and we’re gonna move it down a whole step. So now we do it here, same shapes just a whole step lower, so now I’m on the fifth fret of the A string with my first finger and my third finger is barring the seventh fret of the D, G and B string and then we’re doing Dsus4;so your pinky now picks up the eighth fret of the B string. And then we have A; so seventh fret of the D string, sixth fret of the G string and fifth fret of the B string… Then we’re just going to hit the B string open and then do that dive and then we end that with the open low E string and then it just repeats… All right, so if you don’t have a whammy bar or tremolo or whatever you want to call it. When you get to that last note you could just do something like that, like a slide out or like a pick slide or something…
Conclusion
All right, so there you have it, three more riffs from Van Halen, not too terribly tough to play and really recognizable. The one that I personally have the hardest time with is Ain’t Talkin Bout Love; trying to get all of the palm muting and the correct timing and hitting the correct strings is pretty challenging. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
