Spanish Guitar Teacher’s Insane Cover Of ‘Beat It’ On Solo Acoustic Guitar

When it comes to making music, some of us have the gift, some of us don’t. Then you have people like Miguel Rivera, who make playing every part of a complex multi-instrument song on one acoustic guitar look easy.

Over the last few days, a video of Rivera playing Michael Jackson’s popular song Beat It has gone viral. With perfect rhythm and precision, Rivera hammers out the song’s percussion line with string slaps and a technique which produces harmonics – those faint, ringing notes that comprise the backup “vocal” in Rivera’s version.

On YouTube, Rivera, a full-time guitar teacher who lives in Madrid, explained why he decided to perform the cover: “I decided to start working on this arrangement because it was a great challenge. When you listen to the chorus of the original song, you can hear the main riff (recorded by Steve Lukather) sounding together with the Michael’s vocal melody and, of course, drums, bass and other instruments. My objective was to play all together: the main riff, the vocal melody and the percussion part. I had to find the proper tuning and make good use of the harmonics but in the end I got it. The tapping part is to remark on the great solo that Eddie Van Halen recorded for this song.“