Jack here, jbf music and guitar lessons.
This quick guitar tricks is on tapped harmonics, you can see them in action in the link up
in the top right, if you want some context.
Basically, the idea here is the same idea as natural harmonics, so you know the ones
on the 12th, 7th and 5th frets?
*plays natural harmonics on guitar*
Well we can get those by tapping the fret wire, rather than playing it.
So all I’m doing here
*plays tapped harmonics on guitar*
is trying to hit, pretty much directly, above the fret wire; experiment with how much force
you need; depending on your action, your set up your pick ups it might be a lighter touch,
might be a slightly heavier one.
In term of distance these harmonics will always appear 4th away from the root, a 5th away
from the root; the root being an open d string.
And an octave above.
Now that's in terms of the distance, in terms of the notes you get; the pitch they create;
you get an octave, you get a 5th, and you get a second octave; so they're basically
doing these notes here.
*guitar plays*
Little bit tricky to get your head round, but to be honest that’s more of a side note
than anything else.
Now you can also put some overdrive or compression, tilt your wah pedal forward or boost the treble
to make these harmonics a bit more prominent.
It sounds pretty awesome with both high and low gain, but initially cranking it a bit
and put some more treble until you get a hang of the technique.
So, I've just shown you them on the open string there, but what we can do is use our left
hand, in effect, a bit like a capo, so say we hold down the 3rd fret here on the D string
here.
Rather than tapping on the 12th, 7th and 5th, I just move everything up the same amount.
So while the octave was here, but now it's on the 3rd fret, so I go up to the 15th for
the octave, I go to the 10th for the 5th and it's the 8th for the second octave.
So hopefully you can see all I did was took the harmonic thing we had here and just moved
it up, eh, what would that be... 3 frets to get here.
Now, I mean there are harmonics all over the fretboard; so if you just kind of tap the
string, you can hear all the little kind of... it's the same idea as,
*plays guitar*
the ray gun effect.
So they are everywhere, just to let you know, but I'm sticking with these ones initially,
just cause they are a bit easier to being with.
I mean there are even notes beyond the fret board; so these are in the same places as
pinch harmonics, and essentially the same idea, but with a very different timbre.
So there I'm bending up and where I think the pinch is roughly; here; instead of pinching
it, I'm just putting my finger really lightly on the string.
But these are quite difficult to do because you don't have the same fret markings you
do with the kind of, traditional tapped harmonics, but it's the same sort of principle.
Sometimes I'll flick at the harmonics rather than tap them, and seems to be a bit more
consistent for me anyway; so you could try that.
But rather than tapping it, we're just kind of flicking... above the fret wire.
So if you apply that to a scale with a tiny bit of bending, you can get something like.
You get this kinda cool sort of south east Asian kind of vibe.
As well as applying them to scales you can do chords as well, so even something simple
like G major barre chord.
We can just go an octave above.
You can do this with the other harmonics we looked at as well.
Not quite as easy as getting the sound the octave above though.
The finally idea I’m gonna look at here is playing a chord in one hit, like this.
So what I’m is just fretting an open A major, and I'm tapping the 14th fret on the g, d
and, eh e strings.
A few way to try this, with your middle finger, so I'm just hitting above the fret wire there.
You could try it with, eh, all three fingers,, but what I tend to do, I use to play with
the pick in between these fingers, so out of force of habit, I tend to rotate my 1st
finger so it's side and do that.
the most common one is, is doing that.
But I've never found that incredibly comfortable, so I tend to, do that instead.
If you want some more context there’s a Steve Vai song called Die To Live, where he
uses this exact same idea, it goes like this.
Play Guitar Like Steve Vai
And a little bit slower for you
Right, so to recap everything: We tap above the fret wire, notes a 4th,5th and octave
away from the root are the easiest ones to get initially, but there are harmonics all
over the string.
Including beyond the fret board.
You can use them on scales.
You can use them on chords, you can play the chords in one go, like we did with the Vai
thing or you could arpeggiate them like we did with the G major.
What I would suggest you do is you take these ideas, you run with them, expand upon them
and see what awesome ideas you can come up with yourself.
Cool, so as always, I really hope this video has been useful for you guys; both speedy
and informative; that you’ve learned a cool, quick trick to bust out, have a good idea
of how to use it and work it in to your own craft.
If that has been the case, you've taken something away a new bit of information, want to support
the channel please do consider to share, like comment, sub, if you feel so inclined.
Cheers guys.