Eric Roche style!!

     Technique of Eric Roche about acoustic guitar.  

[Bar 1] Here is a repetitive hammer-on/pull-off figure. Start slowly and work on stamina and clarity. Ideally you want to be able to keep this going for a couple of minutes without feeling fatigue in your fingers.

[Bar 3] With your picking hand you can now tap out accompanying bass notes but watch out that these don't overshadow the melody on the top strings. I've kept this fairly simple but you may want to try adding some extra bass notes in each bar.

[Bar 9] There's a slight change in the melody so be sure that you can move the fingers in time whilst paying attention to the shifting bass notes.

[Bar 14] Eric was particularly adept at intricate techniques such as this artificial harmonic at the 12th fret - either tap this with the picking hand 'i' or 'm' finger or rest the 'i' finger over the 12th fret and pluck the harmonic with the picking hand thumb. Be careful, though, there is not much room for manoeuvre with that melody on the top strings...

[Bar 19] This is where the fun begins! There are fretting hand hammer-ons (on the 5th and 6th strings), tapped/slapped harmonics with the picking hand and a percussive 'thwack' on the body of the guitar with the fretting hand. Work on it slowly, building up coordination, speed and accuracy.

The fretting hand has to travel a fair distance from the strings on the 3rd fret to the upper bout of the guitar for the percussive 'thwack'.

[Bar 23] Here's a reversal of the previous pattern. You now start the bar with percussion rather than the hammer-ons on the bass strings.

[Bar 26] Finally, here's a simple bass line accompanied by some percussion. Tap the fretting hand nails on the upper bout of the guitar on beats 2 and 4 whilst the fretting hand sounds the riff on the sixth string for that pseudo 'castanets' or 'timbale' sound..