Electric Guitar: Natural Harmonic Licks

Occasionally it is hard to rate the difficulty of certain exercises in articles. Determining a lesson's level of playability can be based on a guitarist's personal level of proficiency on the instrument and also their individual taste for playing techniques. If a guitar player likes to play certain things, even if they are more difficult than other "topics," they will be more apt to practice them and won't consider them difficult, even if they are moreso than others, because the guitarist simply enjoys practicing them. Is it clear what I'm trying to say? Another point to remember is that gradually a guitarist's favorite topics will become easier to play as they are performed over the years, etc.

The following exercises could probably be dubbed 'beginner' or 'intermediate' level concerning their difficulty. This article, as you can see from the title, is about natural harmonics. These are different from artificial harmonics where the thumb of one's picking hand is used to attain high-pitched notes (more about the artificial kind of harmonics in another article). Natural harmonics are not fretted in the normal way and can only be played at certain locations.

Try this: To play a natural harmonic, pick your open G string after you have lightly touched the string directly above the 5th fret, without pushing the string all the way down against the fretboard. If a tone higher than your open G string rings out clearly, then you have just executed a natural harmonic and congratulations are in order. Most guitarists have probably played a few natural harmonics before reading this article, I'm sure, since they are quite common. For natural harmonics, basically you simply lay your finger over certain frets and pluck the string without pressing down. Easy enough.

Natural harmonics can be played across these frets, which are called "nodes" on the strings:

4th, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 16th, 19th,

A few can also be played between the 1st and 3rd frets at certain points (which are hard to denote with tablature), although finding their exact locations is sometimes tricky, hence it's difficult to 'bring out' the harmonic at those points as well. Again, the frets specified above are where the natural harmonic "nodes" are located when your guitar is in standard tuning. But keep those frets in mind because they will return in another article when I discuss tapped and touch harmonics.

Let's begin with a simple exercise for natural harmonics:

|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
|---------(5)-------------(7)------|------------(12)-----------------|
|-----(5)-----(5)-----(7)----(7)-|-------(12)------(12)-----(4)--|
|-(5)-------------(7)--------------|-(12)-----------------(12)-----|
|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|

(Notice that we denote the harmonics by placing the numbers inside parentheses.) Attempt the lick above at a moderate tempo, then try to play it fast while striving to execute every note cleanly. Get the lick to sound like an ethereal and haunting blast of exuberant bell-like tones. With natural harmonics, the shifting of hand and fingers is the most difficult part, because your finger has to be placed directly on top of the fret in just the right spot so the precise node will be executed. Picking won't be that difficult, but proper hand and finger placement will.

Now try this natural harmonic "scale":

|-----------------------------------------------------(7)-(12)-|
|-------------------------------------------(7)-(12)-----------|
|---------------------------------(7)-(12)---------------------|
|----------------------(7)-(12)--------------------------------|
|-----------(7)-(12)-------------------------------------------|
|-(7)-(12)-----------------------------------------------------|

Use this scale as you would any other. It is probably in the key of E minor since it involves the natural open strings and has a "moody" sound, but I haven't actually determined the exact pitches of the harmonics, so I can't be 100 percent positive what key it fits into. Personally I think of the "scale" above as being similar to a pentatonic scale. You can go into it during one of your solos and improvise as you normally would. But be careful to not overuse it. At first glance the scale above may seem simple, but because of the five fret stretch and also the delicate finger placement necessary for executing harmonics, it can be fairly challenging to play this one consistently. When you work your way up or down, more than likely you will have to move your hand forward and back, to shift between the 7th and 12th frets. For some notes you will have to place your finger a little ahead of the fret to bring out the harmonic.

Even though this lesson is intermediate in nature, I believe it is important to practice natural harmonics every so often to make sure you stay in shape for executing them fast and clean. Also with these harmonics you can manipulate them with a tremolo bar, or if you don't have one of those, you can perform a somewhat flashy technique whereby you hit a harmonic or two, let them ring out while moving your fretting hand down the neck to the tip of the headstock, where you slightly pull it up and down or move it back and forth (don't get too rough though) so that vibrato is applied to the notes.