As he has previously recounted, Dweezil Zappa first met Eddie Van Halen when he was just 12 years old following an unexpected phone call one evening. It was to be the start of a close friendship, one that would involve jams, writing sessions and, notably, the bestowing of some crucial beginner guitar tricks and tips.
In a new video posted to his YouTube account, Dweezil takes a trip down memory lane to recall the early lessons he had with Van Halen, and shares the ‘surprising’ entry level guitar knowledge the electric guitar virtuoso shared during their meetings.
When he was 12, Dweezil was writing My Mother Is a Space Cadet when Van Halen – and his iconic Frankenstein – came round to help out. Armed with Frankie, the pair dove into an impromptu lesson.
“I want to show you the most basic things that I learned from Edward the first time I sat down and played his guitar,” Dweezil says. “Let me share with you the most basic thing Edward Van Halen showed me, and it might be a surprise for some of you.”
That most basic thing was, perhaps unsurprisingly, concerned with how to tune a guitar. Specifically, Van Halen taught Dweezil how to tune using harmonics. While Dweezil was at the time using the classic approach of fretting the notes at the fifth frets (fourth on the G string) and tuning the open string beneath it, Van Halen encouraged him to use a different approach.
That approach involved using harmonics on the fifth and seventh frets to tune strings relative to one another. Granted, it’s actually a hugely common practice these days, but as a 12-year-old, Dweezil had never come across it before – and it’s something the guitarist still uses to this day.
Those early lessons weren’t just about tuning, though, and Van Halen even went as far as to share three further technique tips and tricks with young Dweezil once Frankie was fully in tune.
Two of those tips were beginner guitar hooks: an easy, entry level open string lick that sounds harder than it looks, and a typically EVH-styled technique that “blew” Dweezil’s mind when he first witnessed it.
“It's kind of like a flanger sound without a flanger, but I do it with my pick, and I make harmonics, so it's a harmonic flanger,” Dweezil goes on. “He showed me how, when he would hit the string with his pick, the thumb would follow and go right across the back of the string after the pick, and it would create a harmonic.
“As he moved the pick across the neck, the harmonics would change, and it sounds like a flanger.” It makes for a must-learn extended technique for aspiring guitarists who are particularly inspired by Van Halen’s playing.
The third and final tip involved creating a slide sound without having a physical slide, which Van Halen demonstrated while the pair were refining the riff to My Mother Is a Space Cadet.
Head over to Dweezil Zappa's YouTube account – or cast your gaze above – to watch the video in full.
