Using open strings while tapping is an excellent way to add some cool texture to your playing.
There are two ways to make an open string sound. An open string either sounds after being picked, or after a finger pulls off from a fretted note to the open string. Right now, we are going to discuss the latter, in the context of your fret-hand fingers pulling off to an open string.
In this lesson, we're just going to practice the motion of pulling off to open strings. Our main obstacle here is to avoid unwanted string noise. When pulling off a string, it’s easy to accidentally hit whatever string is right below, which can cause unwanted string noise. The only exception to this is the High E string, which of course doesn’t have a string below it. For all other strings, however, we need to develop a method that keeps our playing clean, where we only hear the notes we want to hear when we pull off.
The solution is to mute the string below after the pull off. How do we do that? After you pull off a string, you must use that same finger that did the pull off to land on or mute the string under it. Watch my finger closely in the video to observe this motion.