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AHHHH pinch harmonics!!!


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Posted

Alright, well i just learned every part to Coheed and Cambria's Welcome Home and now i have to finish it by learning how to do pinch harmonics... by what a few people have told me you pluck the string along with your thumb but nothing seems to be happing:rolleyes: My setup is a Schecter 006 guitar with a mashall 10 watt amp. Is the amp preventing it? Please tellme if i am doing something wrong.

Thanks!

(ive been trying for the past couple days too so please help!)

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Posted

I am just learning too (and learning welcome home as well) but I've struggled with pinch harmonics. One thing I can tell you is that it's not just touching your thumb to the string after you pick it, you also have to hit the string in the right place. Plucking in different places will create different harmonics. Also increasing distortion seems to increase my chances of getting a pinch harmonic out of any given attempt.

 

-kap

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Posted

watch paul gilbert's Youtube vids on Picking Mechanics to learn how to hold the pick at the correct angle. This will help PHs infinitely.

 

if you dont want to search, this is the best i can do:

 

grip the pick between your thumb and what essentially is the fingernail of your forefinger.

 

i have a feeling you're holding it the other way around, by the fleshy parts of both fingers. Good for strummy applications, but loses the beef of the other grip.

 

you cant be wrong either way, but both grips have their pros and cons.

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Posted

Sink the tip of the pick in the flesh of your thumb and pretend youre gonna cut the string at that point,using the pick and "meat" of the thumb at the same time.Practice on an acoustic or electric unplugged!

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Posted

I turn the pick like 145 degrees towards the string and, then kindof hit down on it and make it fly off the edge of the string only to barely graze my thumb.

 

 

Here is a video of me doing 3 pick squeals at the same time :D

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Posted

Its important to know that you can't just pluck wherever for a pinch harmonic, too. It has to be done on a certain spot over the pickups. Just do what you've been doing, but make sure its in a fluid motion; do not leave your thumb on the string.

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Posted

Its important to know that you can't just pluck wherever for a pinch harmonic, too. It has to be done on a certain spot over the pickups. Just do what you've been doing, but make sure its in a fluid motion; do not leave your thumb on the string.

 

 

I agree here...depending on the type of guitar, you have to find "the spots"...I've learned that song too, so I know what you're talking about. On my humbucker guitar (Epi SG), the good spot is just right of the neck pickup - on my strat, it's closer to the middle of the neck and middle pickups. Just choke up on the pick and hit the string everywhere between the pickups - at some point, you'll hear a difference.

 

Hope that helped.

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Posted

An easy trick is to pick against a knuckle. That is grab/pinch the string between the pick and an available knuckle - I use the pinky. This only works on a downpick but it's a non issue.
This should produce clear harmonics, unamplified and nearly anywhere you can pick. Turn down the bass and crank the treble if you're not quite getting it.

  • 2 weeks later...
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Posted

Choke up on the pick, hit the string with with the pick and then right away hit the string with part of your thumb. Sorry it's not a great explanation although I do take pride in my excellent pinch harmonics.

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Posted

A) Make sure you are using your bridge pickup with the tone and volume all the way up on your guitar.
B) Distortion on your amp or through a pedal helps.
C) The string should be 'brushing', or 'touching', 'choking', whatever, the side of your thumb right after you pick the string. Be aware that at different parts on the string (closer to the neck, closer to the bridge) there are different harmonics. Also in some parts there are no harmonics at all.
To start, practice this... Don't fret at all, play the string open, start on any string but practice on all of them. Pick directly over the 12th fret. Keep on adjusting your picking angle and brushing your thumb across the string until you get the harmonic to sound. After that try the same thing, open string, but do it over the 24th fret, or where the 24th fret would be if you don't have one. Once you get that down(ish) try fretting and moving your hand around while you are doing the pinch harmonic. You should be able to make a whole bunch of different harmonics. You can even do a little arpeggio by fretting just one note and doing pinch harmonics up and down the string. If I was there... this would be easier to explain... However, that should be enough to give you some idea of how it is done... if not, youtube pinch harmonic and see what happens.

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Posted

I finally got these suckers by taking the above advice and forcing myself to concentrate for five minutes each day. I sometimes only got one cool squeal after all that dead picking--and I was losing my mind in frustration. But I'd do it for that five minutes without expecting it to happen, only hoping. Kind of like exercise...you can workout for the first time and question why you don't look good.

 

The pinching motion gradually became more effortless.

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Posted

Yeah, Hshaitan makes a great point that I forgot about the volume and tone being up.

 

Also, like he said, distortion/overdrive is pretty much a necessity to doing clean, pronounced pinch harmonics.

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Posted

i think sometimes the impotance of tone is understated i know if i had instances where i could pluck a screaming harmonic with one tone that was a dead note with another tone played exactly the same.. treble and mondo distortion are vital IMO...and play around with the pick contact pointup and down the string

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Posted

What everyone has said so far is basically right, just make sure youre using alot of gain on your amp, that your thumb clips the string, and I've found that Triangle picks work very very well in comparison to normal picks

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