Cathedral Guitar Lesson – Van Halen
In this Cathedral guitar lesson video, I will show you how to play this beautiful instrumental track off of Van Halen’s Diver Down album.
The tuning is standard tuning, E A D G B E.
For the first part of the video lesson, I will go in-depth on how to get the guitar tone (delay settings etc.) along with some talk about various types of volume pots. Not every volume pot can be used to play Cathedral, a low friction pot would be best.
I also talk a little bit about the types of taper that a volume pot can have. After all of this geeking out on tone and volume pots, I finally start the lesson.
The lesson starts with a breakdown of the technique Eddie used throughout ”Cathedral". Essentially, he has the volume control rolled off, hammers-on a note in the fret-hand, then quickly rolls the volume control up and immediately rolls it back down to off in time for the next note.
This timing can take a while to get down and I give you some practice tips in the lesson.
From there, I will turn off the effects so you can hear the actual notes he is playing clearly, and teach the entire song like that. Occasionally I will put the effects on again so you can hear what it all sounds like when put together.
I hope you guys have enjoyed this Van Halen marathon for the past month. I thought that “Cathedral” would be a fitting tribute to "The King” to bring the marathon to a close.
R.I.P. Eddie! Carl….
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