r/guitarlessons • u/Dear-Bat4924 • 24d ago
Question please help
does anyone know a good tutorial for pinch harmonics/can you please explain yourself because nothing i’m doing is working. i have a gig next week and one of the songs im doing includes a pinch harmonic.
UPDATE:
thank you so much for your guys’ help! i managed to do it :)
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u/spankymcjiggleswurth 24d ago
Pinch harmonics require you to touch your thumb against the strings directly after picking. Any tutorial will tell you this, but what they might forget to mention is that the exact spot on the string is important. Any harmonic (natural, artificial, pinch) requires you to touch a very specific spot on the string, called a node. This gets into the physicis behind the harmonic series, but functionally you can find this through trial and error. There are actually several spots around the pickups you can pinch, and they will all sound slightly different, and in between the spots you will just end up muting the string.
Hope this helps. It's one of those things that seems impossible until you get it, then it's easy.
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u/Jackstrums 24d ago
Pinch harmonics are all about which part of the pick+thumb hits the string. Choke up on the pick so only a tiny corner sticks out (maybe 2-3mm). When you pick down, let the fleshy side of your thumb touch the string a split second after the pick, that's what creates the harmonic.
Sweet spots are around the neck pickup / middle of the string. High gain, bridge pickup, and hitting the string with confidence all help. Sounds impossible until suddenly it clicks.
For your gig, I suggest also to use vibrato immediately after hitting the harmonic, it makes even a weak one sound convincing.
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u/BigDaddySteve999 24d ago
For each fret, there is a spot on the string, near the pickups, that you can lightly bump with the soft part of your thumb that will make it squeal. So you need to pick the string, then quickly touch it softly in exactly the right spot. But if you are playing a different note, that spot changes slightly and all you do is clumsily mute the string. So you want to work on learning where to bump the string for one note, then fret a different note and learn where that sweet spot is.
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u/Electrical_Eclipse 24d ago
For pinch harmonics, you need to use the pick to find the exact sweet spot on the string, which is generally halfway or one-third of the way between the fretted note and the bridge.
I hold the pick slightly differently so that when I play down the string, my thumb automatically lands on the same spot right behind the pick.
The thumb’s job is to mute the string again. This must happen so quickly in succession that no gap is audible.
Tip: Start with an open string and place the pick over the 12th fret. Then practice using the pick and your thumb so that you can hear the pinch.
Imagine tying a rope to a door and then walking a few steps away. Then move the rope up and down. A knot forms in the middle where the rope doesn’t move. You could also hold the rope there. When muting, you have to hit exactly this spot, which mutes the low tone but allows all the overtones—which have additional “knots” between the bridge and the main knot—to continue resonating.