Harmonics Lesson

For more examples, audio, and video associated with this lesson, visit AcousticGuitar.com

The guitar appears to be a pretty straightforward instrument: there's a place to put your fingers and a place to pluck the strings. If you do it the right way, it makes a sound. Listeners are so accustomed to the sound of fretted notes on the guitar that many people think it's the only sound a guitar can produce, but there's a trick of physics that lets guitarists play a different sound altogether: a bell-like tone called a harmonic.

Playing harmonics is a bit of an art in itself. It takes practice to develop the right touch! In this lesson we'll discuss how to play natural and artificial harmonics, as well as some ways to use them within melodies and chords.

Natural Harmonics: 5 minutes

On the guitar, you can produce a "natural" harmonic with relative ease. The easiest place to do this is at the 12th fret, one octave above any open string. Lightly touch the string at the 12th fret (Example 1) with the index finger of your fretting hand. Your finger needs to be directly over the fret to produce the right sound. Try not to press the string at all; just barely touch it with the tip or fleshy part of your finger. If you are too far in front of or behind the fret, the harmonic will not sound correctly, but you'll know it when you get it right—listen for the bell-like sound. The harmonic at the 12th fret produces a note one octave higher than that of the open string. In physics, the sweet spot you're aiming for is called a node.

There are a few other nodes on the fretboard—the most useful ones occur at the fifth and seventh frets (Example 2). The fifth-fret harmonic produces a note two octaves higher than the open string, while the seventh-fret harmonic sounds an octave plus a fifth (the equivalent of 19 frets) above the open string. Playing a few of these nodes in time is good practice and can even create some interesting musical ideas. Example 3 begins on G (two octaves above the open third string), then moves to F# (an octave plus a fifth above the open second string), E (one octave above the open first string), D (an octave and a fifth above G), and so on.