Eddie Van Halen

Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, generally known as Eddie Van Halen, (born January 26, 1955 in Nijmegen, Netherlands,) is a virtuoso guitarist, classically-trained pianist, and founding member of the hard rock band Van Halen. His family moved to Pasadena, California in 1962.

Innovation

Van Halen's self-titled debut album was released on February 10, 1978 and almost immediately recognized as a ground-breaking record.

Related Topics:
Self-titled debut album - February 10 - 1978

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Sound and technique

Edward Van Halen's famous "brown sound" (derived from the use of a stock 100-watt Marshall amp, a few effects, a variac to lower the voltage of the amp to 89 volts to get high gain distortion at lower volumes, and a "Frankenstein" guitar Van Halen constructed using a vintage Gibson humbucker pickup mounted in a cheap body with an unfinished maple neck and fingerboard), his innovative two-handed tapping techniques, dazzling speed, and unparalleled rhythmic sensibility influenced generations of guitarists. While his prowess as a stunning soloist is well established, what is not widely known is that Van Halen is also among the greatest rhythm guitarists in rock history. Though he did not originate the two-handed tapping technique, Van Halen has credited Jimmy Page's guitar solo from the song "Heartbreaker" (Led Zeppelin II) as the inspiration for developing it. Soon after, Van Halen developed a vast variety of innovative two-handed techniques, which became a cornerstone of Van Halen's personal style, and they are often imitated, but rarely duplicated, by legions of lesser guitarists. In support of this unusual method of playing, Van Halen also holds a patent for a flip-out support device which attaches to the rear of the electric guitar. This device enables the user to play the guitar in a manner similar to the piano by orienting the face of the guitar upward instead of forward.

Related Topics:
Gibson - Humbucker - Jimmy Page - Guitar solo - Led Zeppelin II

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Tuning

Though rarely discussed, one of the most distinctive aspects of Van Halen's sound was Eddie Van Halen's tuning of the guitar. Before Van Halen, most distorted, metal-oriented rock consciously avoided the use of the major third interval in guitar chords, creating instead the signature power chord of the genre. When run through a distorted amplifier, the rapid beating of the major third on a conventionally tuned guitar is distracting and somewhat dissonant. Van Halen developed a technique of flatting his B string slightly so that the interval between the open G and B is a perfect, beatless third. This consonant third was almost unheard of in distorted-guitar rock, and allowed Van Halen to use major chords in a way that mixed classic hard rock power with "happy" pop. The effect is pronounced on songs such as "Runnin' With the Devil", "Unchained", and "Where Have All the Good Times Gone?".

Related Topics:
Major third - Power chord - Conventionally tuned - Dissonant

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With the B string flatted the correct amount, chords in some positions on the guitar have perfect thirds, but in other positions the flat B string creates terribly out of tune intervals. Van Halen is quoted as saying, "...the guitar... is just theoretically built wrong. Because every string — the intervals are fourths, except for from G to B, which is a third, and it's always that damn B string that fucks it up. So I always tune it a little bit flat, and then when I need it in tune, I just bend it up. Because once it's sharp, you can't make it flat! Over the years, you know, it's just a feel thing, you develop a feel for when you hit a certain chord, you know how to manipulate the string to make it in tune."

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Despite his wording above, Van Halen does not flat the B string for everything. "The B string is always to keep in tune all the time! So I have to retune for certain songs. And when I use the Floyd onstage, I have to unclamp it and do it real quick. But with a standard-vibrato guitar, I can tune it while I'm playing." (Here he was referring to an early version of the Floyd Rose system, which had no fine tuners on the bridge.)

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Use of Floyd Rose system

Van Halen was also key in the development of the Floyd Rose double-locking fulcrum vibrato system for electric guitars. Frustrated with the Fender-style vibrato system's inability to stay in tune under heavy use, Van Halen collaborated with Floyd Rose on improvements to Rose's device. Among Van Halen's suggestions were the supplemental tuner knobs on the vibrato unit itself which allow the player to fine-tune the pitch of the guitar after the string locking clamps were enabled; these fine-tuners are now a integral feature on Floyd Rose-type vibrato systems. More recently, Van Halen designed and patented the D-Tuna device, which enables a player to quickly detune the lowest string on a Floyd Rose vibrato-equipped guitar down a full step, extending the effective tonal range of the guitar without affecting the overall tuning of the remaining strings. Van Halen's agility with guitar vibrato systems is virtually unmatched; his recorded work with the unique transposing TransTrem vibrato system on the Steinberger line of guitars has yet to be surpassed. Among Van Halen's peers, only Steve Vai has similarly experimented with extending the guitar's vocabulary with the vibrato unit, although it can be argued that Vai's vibrato antics are not as groundbreaking or revolutionary as Van Halen's earliest pioneering efforts.

Related Topics:
Floyd Rose - Steve Vai

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