Steve Rieck: In the last series on harmonics, we discovered some of the basic concepts for harmonics. What I want to do in this is try to get a little more advanced with that and to just step you through some of the stuff that we learned earlier, what is a harmonic. If you play a string Open, the first string Open is tuned to an E, if I were to put my finger directly over the 12th fret and I am not pushing the string into the fret or into the fretboard at all; I am just barely touching the string. So, my finger is barely making contact with the string and I pick the note and then I just release my finger off the string almost immediately right after I pick it.
That creates a one-octave harmonic chime. So, harmonics basically sound like little chime notes like that and the idea is at the 12th fret, the note, the harmonic that you play winds up being one octave higher than the open string. So, E, one octave higher. For the second string, string to B, so the 12th fret harmonic is B, one octave higher. G (third), G one octave higher. The D (fourth), D an octave higher. The A (fifth), A an octave higher and the E (sixth), E an octave higher.
So, all of those notes of the 12th fret are simply the harmonic which is one octave higher than the open string. The reason that is because the vibrating length of the string if you look at the open string, it vibrates from the bridge all the way to the string nut, the exact midpoint of that link, there is the 12th fret. That's what creates the harmonic.
So, one octave is at the exact midpoint. If we were to find a quarter length of the string, in other words, directly over the fifth fret or somewhere around where a 24th fret would be, that would be the quarter length in the string, in other words, a half of the half. That's going to create harmonics that are twice as high. So, you are going to get a one-octave harmonic here and then a two-octave harmonic at the fifth fret. So again, these are the same notes; E, B, G, D, A, E but those are two octaves higher than the open string whereas the 12th fret is one octave higher.
So, if I play, let's say, where the 24th fret would be, right over there and you kind of got a feel around on your guitar to find the exact right point because there's no frets underneath it, but that would be where a 24th fret is. Those notes are two octaves higher than the open strings; E, A, D, G, B, E. Notice how that's the same as E, A, D, G, B, E and then the one octave at the 12th fret; E, A, D, G, B, E.
So, let's look at some more harmonics in the next episode.
Erik Mongrain: Hi, I am Erik Mongrain and today, I am going to try and show you to play the lap-tapping. The point here is this technique is mostly improvisation. For me, I would say, 75% improvisation and 25% structures.
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