JFRocks.com mini guitar lessons page

The technique lessons featured on this page are designed to be for Electric guitar. Most of the lessons covered here however will transfer to acoustic without any issue. This lesson page will be updated as often as possible. The other pages on JFRocks and JFRocks UNplugged keep me rather busy and I try to keep all technique lessons to CD ROM. What this page will do a lot of the time is expand upon lessons covered on various CD ROMs. If this is the case the Category below will state which CD ROM the lesson is expanding on. I hope you enjoy these mini lessons as I call them and remember all lessons from the past are located on the Lesson Archives page.

*Remember Effect suggestions are my suggestions for the home player. Usually suggestions are geared for a low budget.

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This Lesson's difficulty level 1-10 scale

For this lesson we will be dealing with some harmonics questions that have come in over the past few months or so through the ask Jeff form here on the site. If you have trouble understanding and using the various types of harmonics that exist, then stick around this lesson will probably help you out a bit.

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There are a few different types of harmonics that we will be covering here. I will give you both an understanding of the technique involved with doing them and also an understanding of what pitches you are doing so you know how to use these darn things.

Natural Harmonics: These are what their name implies naturally occurring harmonics. They occur at various places on the fret board and cannot be moved. They are what they are.

The most common ones are, 12th fret, 5th fret, and 7th fret. However there are others such as 3rd fret, 4th fret, and also 2nd fret but those are very hard to hit and most don't bother with them. The pitches of these natural harmonics are actually quite simple. Some are the same as what the fret they are over is. Others are not the same. However, these harmonics repeat in various places on the fret board. For example, the 4th fret harmonics also occur at the 9th fret. The 3rd fret harmonics are the same pitches as the 7th fret harmonics the only difference is they are an octave higher than the 7th fret ones. Same can be said of the 12th fret harmonics. They are the same pitches as the 5th fret only the 5th fret ones are an octave higher than the 12th fret.

That being said please view the chart and tabs below to get the pitches of these things.

Diagram indicates natural harmonic pitches at the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 12th frets.

Color coding below shows harmonics that match in pitch. I.e. Blue matches Blue, Red matches Red etc.

E__3h____4h___5h___7h___9h____12h________________________
B__3h____4h___5h___7h___9h____12h________________________
G__3h____4h___5h___7h___9h____12h________________________
D__3h____4h___5h___7h___9h____12h________________________
A__3h____4h___5h___7h___9h____12h________________________
E__3h____4h___5h___7h___9h____12h________________________

Artificial harmonics: These fall into many categories. I'm going to do a blanket coverage of them and the various techniques involved with doing them and also I'm going to show you how to figure out the pitches if you want to.

Artificial harmonics are what their name implies. These do NOT occur naturally on the fret board. YOU create them. You basically force them to happen. The thing is what most people fail to realize is that the physics behind what makes these harmonics happen is the same physics that makes the natural harmonics happen. You are simply using a different technique to make the harmonic sound. Or in the case of artificial harmonics you are using a different technique to force them to occur out of nature.

E_______________________________________________
B_______________________________________________
G_7a.h ~__7^1a.h ~__________________________________
D_______________________________________________
A_______________________________________________
E_______________________________________________

E___________________________________________________________
B___________________________________________________________
G_7^1a.h_7a.h_5a.h_7^1a.h_5a.h_____________________________________
D________________________7a.h_6a.h_5a.h_________________________
A____________________________________7a.h_6a.h_5^1a.h>release_5~~__
E___________________________________________________________

Pinch harmonics: These are tricky and actually used by classical and jazz players more than rock guitarists. The term pinch harmonic is used a lot of different ways. Usually or at least how I was taught what is below is a "pinch harmonic". These are true artificial harmonics. When I break it down for you, you should see that we are really doing natural harmonics but forcing them to happen in un-natural places on the fret board by using our finger as a capo of sorts.

Below is a piece of the lead intro to VH's Can't stop Lovin you off the Balance CD. Its a great example of this technique. Its best to use some sort of compression for added sustain on these by the way although there are guys who are masters of these harmonics that can bang them out on an acoustic guitar like you've never seen before. Most of us need a little sustain help with this sort of technique.

E_______________________________________________________________
B_10 ah(22)~~~~~___10^1_ah(22)>release_10 ah(22)_9 ah(21)_10 ah(22)~~~~~_
G_______________________________________________________________
D_______________________________________________________________
A_______________________________________________________________
E_______________________________________________________________

Tap harmonics: Very cool sounding artificial harmonics. Far easier to do than the pinch harmonics given above. Tap harmonics are nice because you can create them all over the place and just like natural harmonics they can be bent or whammy barred down or you can add vibrato with the whammy bar etc. So they are what I call pliable harmonics.

The problem most people have is doing them. And hey nobody hits them 100% of the time. NOT EVEN ED. He's be the first guy to tell you I'm sure that he misses them more often than he would like to.

There is a trick to doing them and I will show you on the video what that is. See tabs below for some practice examples to mess with.

Leave the 2nd fret 3rd string fretted and bent until told otherwise. h(9) or h(11) means to tap harmonic on the fret indicated. As I stated on the video be sure to tap the metal of the fret firmly and get out of there quickly. DO NOT tap over the wood or Dot. If you don't understand why I will explain on the video.

E_______________________________________________
B_______________________________________________
G_2^1__2^1_h(9)_h(11)_h(9)__h(11)>release bend>>2~_______
D_______________________________________________
A_______________________________________________
E_______________________________________________

E__________________________________________________
B__________________________________________________
G_7^1__7^1_h(19)_h(14)_h(12)>release bend>>7~_______________
D__________________________________________________
A__________________________________________________
E__________________________________________________

A little practice tap harmonic sequence from our friend Mr. VH. This sequence is the ending tap harmonic portion of the intro to Mean Street. Great practice and these harmonics are in some odd ball spots as well. What I mean is we don't normally associate an 11th fret tap harmonic with the 7th fret of a string. Its more common to do either 19th or 12th or 14th etc.

The rest of the finer points of this lesson are on the video so I strongly urge that if you tried to just do this lesson based on the tabs here on this lessons page you are missing the white meat of what is really explained in this lesson. If possible please download the video so that you get all the information available with this lesson.