† Erik Mongrain: Lap Tapping Technique †

I'm not sure how many people have heard of Erik Mongrain . He is a Canadian composer and guitarist, best known for his unique acoustic style, and his use of a two-handed lap tapping technique on the acoustic guitar.


Biography: I've read a lot from a few musical forums that mentioned Erik Mongrain started his guitar at the age of 14 and he learned his guitar via ear hearing. He was previously an electric guitarist but he found himself more interested with acoustic/classical guitar and therefore he began to experiment with a technique known as lap tapping, in which the player lays the guitar across their lap, and taps the strings on the fret board with both hands.


The classic way of performing tapping is just like what is shown above. However, Erik has another extended way of playing his very own lap tapping.


So what is lap tapping? As you can see from the picture above, Erik Mongrain is performing wonderful lap tapping technique by treating the guitar as a xylophone. This is an mazing video clip that I manage to find from YouTube showing how Erik does his tapping.


This method increases the flexibility of the instrument, in that it makes it possible to play more types of music on a guitar, and also producing more sound effects.