Luís Kalil – 'Boulevard' Reverse Tapping Lesson
Luís Kalil stopped by Guitar World studios to give us another lesson in reverse tapping. This time for his song, "Boulevard," the title track from the 2-song EP featuring Dirk Verbeuren (former Soilwork) on drums and Lucas Arruda (Jack The Joker) on bass.
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MusicTranscript
00:00Hey everyone, my name is Luiz Calil, and today I'm at Guitar World.
00:09I actually can't believe I'm saying that.
00:12I'm here to play my song Boulevard and present for you guys my technique of reverse tapping,
00:17where you basically reverse the position of your hands and it opens a lot of new sounds
00:21and possibilities sonically.
00:23And I'm gonna be playing on this awesome ESP LTD H3-1000, featuring EMG pickups, TW models,
00:32and I'm in drop D tuning, so hope you guys like the song as much as I do, alright?
00:37Let's listen to it.
01:07Let's go.
01:37Let's go.
02:07Let's go.
02:37Let's go.
03:07Let's go.
03:08Let's go.
03:37Let's go.
03:53Let's go.
04:07Alright, so now I'm gonna show you guys how to play the riffs and lead parts that I use
04:13the most, reverse tapping, in this song.
04:16So basically the riff, we're gonna start off like this, remember, we're in drop D tuning,
04:21so one thing that's very important, whenever you leave the fret like this, make sure you
04:37really make a pull off, you know, and you pull the string hard so it sounds very aggressive.
04:45Also one very important tip, whenever you're using your right hand and your left hand,
04:50make sure you play and press the frets as hard as you can, because you gotta push the
04:55sound and separate the notes, this is the hardest thing about reverse tapping, and any
04:59tapping in general, it's about making the notes pop out in the middle of the mix, or
05:05your band playing at the same time, and making it sound clean and not muddy, because it's
05:10a hard technique to execute, easy to sound muddy.
05:14So pay attention to that and press the frets really hard, okay?
05:17So second part is.
05:28So this is a little fill that I do.
05:36So when you get to, you come back to the riff.
05:45And in between, it's not on the original track, but I like doing the, just on the fret 3,
05:53so strings D, G, and B, so very Zach Wilde as well, and Sinister Gaze, I like stuff like
06:01this, Dimebag Darrell, I love that shit.
06:03So second riff goes like this, reverse tapping is not the main thing anymore, and I just
06:08add on the fills 1 and 2, so you can come back to the riff later.
06:14So.
06:30Remember, this part of your arm is going to mute everything that's above finger 1, and
06:34everything below finger 1 will be muted by this finger here, okay?
06:38This is the best tip I can give you to mute the strings.
06:41And also make sure you press really hard the strings, as I said before, and it's really,
06:47a lot of the process of playing something and learning a technique is about observing
06:52how it feels to play it right, and how it feels when you play it slow and you can mute
06:57everything, so basically just get used to really aiming at the D string, which is the
07:02only one you're playing, instead of, you know, hitting the other strings below and above
07:07and making sounds that you don't want to, okay?
07:10So second part of the riff is.
07:18So basically really simple.
07:21I'm just avoiding the, you know, so that's why I play first with the.
07:28As I said, an alternative way to connect the notes that, you know, it's really specific
07:33on my taste.
07:34So third and last part that I use the reverse tapping technique on the song is basically
07:38you're only going to use the G string.
07:41And this is going to play, it's a little faster, a little more complicated, but I think it's
07:45something really cool for you guys to work on, and also you can use this in any solo
07:49that you want, any kind of scale that you have, you can just pick one string and you
07:54can start here and go crawling, you know, towards the beginning of the next, so.
08:09So this is a really important thing as well, in the end, you notice, you can notice that
08:22I do.
08:26You know when Dimebag, for example, used on the walk solo.
08:31So it's really important when you do, when you come back, you, you know, you do that,
08:36so.
08:39And also, that's really important, it's like your pick attack when you don't have the pick,
08:52because you don't have enough time to come back with the pick, so just use your finger,
08:56alright?
08:57So guys, hope you like these examples, I'm loving being here at Guitar World Magazine,
09:02it's a dream come true for me, you cannot actually believe that I'm here.
09:06So guys, thanks for having me, thanks ESP, EMG for all the support, and make sure you
09:12follow me and my band Red Devil Vortex online, you can find us anywhere from TikTok to Instagram,
09:18and check out our merch as well.
09:20If you want to know more about Reverse Tapping, I have the Reverse Tapping online course that
09:24I recently dropped, and it's all made by myself, and I, you know, since the, from the landing
09:30page to the actual videos you see, I edited everything and I put my best on it to share
09:35with you guys how to incorporate this technique in your playing, alright?
09:39Thank you so much guys.