gingerprince
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- Oct 21, 2013
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Hi
Just a little question to throw out there. Have been learning various tunes for a while from tabs, videos, by ear etc. Recently I've been having a play at playing Bohemian Rhapsody, Jake Shimabukaro arrangement. It's the first time I've come across the concept of playing Harmonics. So I've been playing around, and I can (slightly inconsistently I admit) get it to successfully chime, and using the 1-hand method.
So in this particular arrangement, in the 2 bars before "Mama, just killed a man" I see tabs as below: -
Where (12) is the natural harmonic and [14] is the false harmonic by fretting the 2nd fret and chiming the 14th.
When I watch videos of him playing, it seems he forgoes the false harmonic in favour of picking a D in the A string, e.g.
However ignoring harmonics altogether, you could arguably just use the 7th and 5th fret on the A string e.g.
So my question, having only just discovered harmonics is, why would you choose to use one versus just the "plain old" note? Some possible reasons I can think are: -
* "Because I can"/showboating.
* So it "rings out" longer and generally gives a fuller sound.
* Possibly less finger movement, but doing the "regular" way isn't particularly difficult?
To me, the sound itself in isolation is nice, but it's a different sound in the middle of a piece. To my ear it's analogous to when playing a synthesiser with sampled piano sounds. On cheaper models there'll be a sample of each key used across several keys using pitch shifting. When you press keys higher up, depending how well the sample was made the tone is quite different. Whereas with a real piano there'd be a subtle transition as you're playing gradually longer strings, you really hear the "step" from one tone to another even though you've really only gone one key further up, and it sounds almost like a different instrument.
The piano/keyboard might be a poor analogy and confuse matters, but I'm genuinely interested on the use cases for harmonics?
Thanks
Just a little question to throw out there. Have been learning various tunes for a while from tabs, videos, by ear etc. Recently I've been having a play at playing Bohemian Rhapsody, Jake Shimabukaro arrangement. It's the first time I've come across the concept of playing Harmonics. So I've been playing around, and I can (slightly inconsistently I admit) get it to successfully chime, and using the 1-hand method.
So in this particular arrangement, in the 2 bars before "Mama, just killed a man" I see tabs as below: -
Code:
A 0/2
E 3 3 (12)
C 2 2 [14]
G 0 0 0Where (12) is the natural harmonic and [14] is the false harmonic by fretting the 2nd fret and chiming the 14th.
When I watch videos of him playing, it seems he forgoes the false harmonic in favour of picking a D in the A string, e.g.
Code:
A 0/2 5
E 3 3 (12)
C 2 2
G 0 0 0However ignoring harmonics altogether, you could arguably just use the 7th and 5th fret on the A string e.g.
Code:
A 0/2 7 5
E 3 3
C 2 2
G 0 0 0So my question, having only just discovered harmonics is, why would you choose to use one versus just the "plain old" note? Some possible reasons I can think are: -
* "Because I can"/showboating.
* So it "rings out" longer and generally gives a fuller sound.
* Possibly less finger movement, but doing the "regular" way isn't particularly difficult?
To me, the sound itself in isolation is nice, but it's a different sound in the middle of a piece. To my ear it's analogous to when playing a synthesiser with sampled piano sounds. On cheaper models there'll be a sample of each key used across several keys using pitch shifting. When you press keys higher up, depending how well the sample was made the tone is quite different. Whereas with a real piano there'd be a subtle transition as you're playing gradually longer strings, you really hear the "step" from one tone to another even though you've really only gone one key further up, and it sounds almost like a different instrument.
The piano/keyboard might be a poor analogy and confuse matters, but I'm genuinely interested on the use cases for harmonics?
Thanks
