Ice Cream Man Guitar Lesson – Van Halen

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In this Ice Cream Man guitar lesson video, I will show you how to play this great cover song from Van Halen off of their debut album.

The song was originally written and recorded by Chicago blues musician John Brim, but Eddie and company certainly made it their own with this fan favorite.

The tuning for the acoustic section that is played by David Lee Roth at the beginning of the song is open Eb tuning. The notes are, starting from the 6th string, Eb Bb Eb G Bb Eb. The tuning Eddie is using for the electric guitar parts when the full band enters is Eb standard tuning, Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb.

The acoustic section is made much easier to play with this tuning and is played finger style by Roth. It is pretty repetitive, using the same progression 4 times, but the 3rd time does contains a variation.

After Eddie begins to play, he is playing a more stripped down rock blues version of that classic blues riff. However, once he launches into the solo, everything is taken to a whole new level.

Eddie uses some extremely wide stretches at the beginning of the solo, which will be challenging for pretty much all players. He is performing a symmetrical lick and of course, he is quite well known for them. In fact, there will be another one at the end of the song.

The solo is full of classic Eddie licks and although it is very challenging, it is a lot of fun to play.

After the solo we get back to the chorus riff before Eddie launches into a series of quick fills which I will also cover note-for-note.

The ending is a pretty big departure from the rest of the song with a classic blues turnaround as it's foundation following by a quick symmetrical lick by Eddie to end the song.

I hope you guys enjoy learning this Van Halen classic! Carl...

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Ice Cream Man Guitar Lesson - Van Halen