You know that jar of pickles that refuses to open no matter what you do — and then someone strolls over and pops the lid in half a second, smiling? Haken's “Puzzle Box” tapping section is that jar. The jar is your fretboard, and the person opening it effortlessly is Richard Henshall.
This little clip is me taking on the tapping section from “Puzzle Box,” off Haken's Vector album — one of my favourite prog-metal moments and a genuine coordination gauntlet — a short, fiendish guitar tapping lick. It's on a seven-string, because apparently six strings just weren't enough suffering for one afternoon.
How this two-handed tapping lick works
The whole thing is two-handed tapping: the right hand abandons its cosy pick-holding day job and starts hammering notes high up the neck, while the left hand taps out arpeggios underneath. The secret is not speed — it's synchronisation. Both hands are outlining pieces of the same arpeggio, so if your timing drifts even a hair, the shape collapses into mush. Practise it slowly, one hand at a time, then glue them together at half the tempo you're convinced you need. And mute like your life depends on it — that seventh string is one open note away from ringing out and quietly humiliating you. New to all this? Start with the tapping basics first, then come back and suffer properly.
If watching this made your fingers ache in sympathy, you can toss a coffee my way on Patreon — completely optional, purely to fund more questionable tapping decisions. Now go annoy your neighbours. It's what Vector would have wanted.