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How do you play an quot;natural harmonicquot; ? If we take the song quot;Crazy Trainquot; as an example, in that song there's such a thing as quot;natural harmonicsquot;, and I need to know how you play a natural harmonic.

Thanks mates.

You just lightly rest your finger over the metal fret and it will chime upon being plucked. More info Here: from : localhost/harmonics

The physics of vibrating strings is a complex subject in which I have no expertise, other than twanging music out of them, so I won't pretend to know the details. I do know that when you strike a guitar string, the note that you hear is called the 'fundamental'. It's by far the loudest note created, but along with it you are also hearing 'harmonics'. These are subsidiary tones that accompany the fundamental, and are responsible for making each instrument sound the way it does.

Guitar 'harmonics' are created when you lightly touch the string with your finger at specific positions and then pluck the string. This causes both sections of the string, to the right and left of the spot you're touching, to vibrate simultaneously, giving a bell like quality to the note. It's best to quickly remove your finger as you pluck. What you are doing is removing the fundamental and only hearing the harmonics.

There are three points along the string points this: the fifth, seventh and twelfth frets ... directly above the fret-wire. At these points, the string is divided exactly into fourths, thirds and halves respectively. The purity of sound comes from these perfect fractions of string ringing together. If you try it anywhere else on the string, you hear a dead sound without any ring.

The movie shoes the technique quite well. You never push down on the string, all you need is to very lightly touch it and as soon as you've plucked it with the other hand, stop touching it. It takes a little while to master, a bit like rubbing a note out of the rim of a wine glass, but once you get it, you've got it forever.

The notes created are not always the same notes as the fretted note.

At the 12th fret, they are the same note, and in fact playing one after the other is a good way to see if the intonation on your instrument is right: both fretted note and harmonic should be identical in pitch. If they're not, your bridge needs adjusting.

At the 7th fret, the harmonic is one octave higher than the fretted note.

At the 5th fret, the harmonic is the 'fifth' of the fretted note, but 2 octaves higher. In other words, on the E string, the fretted note at the 5th fret is an A note, but the harmonic played at the 5th fret is an E note two octaves higher.

You can see in the movie I play a few at the 12th fret, then a few at the 7th and 5th frets. I then play a little melodic line using harmonics from the 12th and 7th frets. These open string harmonics are the 'natural harmonics'.

As for crazy train, the only natural harmonics i can remember are the ones on the D amp; G on the 5th fret. If its these, then simply rest your finger over the fifth fret (on the metal) very lightly and pick the string.

The rest are pinch harmonics in that Randy number i believe.

Hope this clears stuff up a bit.

Thanks man, I was looking at this tab:

from : localhost/on this tab it's used on the 7th fret. I don't know if the tab is correct (haven't tried it yet), but it's got like 124 votes or something, and has 5 stars (the best), so it should be.

I was wondering how to do natural harmonics too

Thanks for the site Kev