Originally Posted by: gmixstudiosi be damned I cant get to grips with the widdling style of say van halen

Edward has a wonderful style. :)

His rhythm playing typically consists of triad chords intersperced with ornamental notes, melodic riffs and single note lines connecting the chords.

Lots of palm muting variations & isolating certain strings of a chord.

His lead playing typical consists of diatonic mode (dorian & phrygian) notes inside the normal pentatonic box shapes. He also uses those triad chord shapes and inversions in a linear manner (all stretched out on one string) in order to do his legendary tapping technique.

Lots of hammer-on, pull-off sliping and sliding, alternated with tremolo picking. Have you ever noticed that Eruption is essentially a brief overview of most of his lead techniques? :)

FWIW - to my knowledge Ed very rarely uses harmonic minor. There are a couple of licks in Little Dreamer explicitly using it, but other than those not so much.

I will try to put together an EVH style tutorial. For now look at:

Rhythm riffing with triads:
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=148
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=733

Speed licks:
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=213

Tapping:
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=13
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=15
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=16
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=21

Also look at this intro video. It has a few EVH-isms.
http://www.guitartricks.com/lesson.php?input=11614