technique question

Not a uke... but any one know what he's doing to get those harmonics? It appears to be something with his thumb knuckle? It seems to be very accurate and fast. Id like to learn it, but i can't tell how he's doing it.

Sweet. Find. Totally dig it.

Nothing too secret about artificial harmonics, but the way he's sounding them is interesting. Looks to me like he's chiming the node with the side/top of his thumb/thumb knuckle and plucking with his middle finger. It's anybody's guess whether he's using his fingernail (looks pretty short, but the tone seems to bright for just the finger pad). Steel strings probably help. And heaps and heaps of practice. Artificial harmonics are inherently hard to play, let alone with speed and precision like that. Wow.

Hippie Guy is right. It's mostly conventional harmonics work. You will find hundreds of videos of advanced players doing the same thing, with one difference. This player turns his hand in order to touch the desired point on the string with his thumb knuckle, while plucking with his middle finger. Most everyone else uses the index finger rather than the thumb knuckle.
My opinion is turning your hand like that is madness. Burning far too many calories in wasted movement. Plus, it seems to me, we have far more control of the tip of our index fingers than we do of what amounts to the back of our hand. In addition, as the master instructor in this video says, the further your damping point is from your plucking point, the better.
https://youtu.be/hJ68nPS__YI
It works okay for Mr Arkhipovskiy, but trying to learn it his way is a titantic waste of time.

I normally index to damp, and thumb to pluck.
But it has a slightly different sound than what this guy is doing.
His technique.. is fast, and it sounds... sharper in the attack.
Index/pluck.. has a slight lag to it, and the ring doesn't have the same kind of attack.

Alexey.. is a true virtuoso and a master level technical player.
He wouldn't do it that way for no reason.

I just cant quite figure out what he's doing for it.

I've been extremely underwhelmed over the years with the tone of standard index finger chime, thumb pluck artificial harmonics on 'ukulele. They sound cheap compared to the singing bell sound that a steel guitar gets. My compromise is to chime like a steel player - by picking on the reverse side of the string with my thumb and hitting the node with my pinky or ring knuckle. It took a while to figure out, but it sounds much cleaner to me. I imagine Alexey has a similar reason.

Hippie Guy said:

I've been extremely underwhelmed over the years with the tone of standard index finger chime, thumb pluck artificial harmonics on 'ukulele. They sound cheap compared to the singing bell sound that a steel guitar gets. My compromise is to chime like a steel player - by picking on the reverse side of the string with my thumb and hitting the node with my pinky or ring knuckle. It took a while to figure out, but it sounds much cleaner to me. I imagine Alexey has a similar reason.

Click to expand...

Im with you on the index finger harmonic tone. Sometimes it's fine if you want something softer, but sometimes I just want a plucky harmonic to cheat a note an octave up that sounds like... it's just playing an octave up.

Do you have a vid clip you can point at with your method?

The other advantage I can see with alexey's method is the speed. Index pluck, you have to set and pluck, and the delay is a thing to compensate for. Alexey's way seems like it's the speed of just knocking on the string.