Difficulty: Moderately Challenging
Things You’ll Need:
- Electric guitar
- amplifier
- distortion
- pick
Making your guitar scream
Step1
First of all (although not absolutely necessary) for the artificial harmonic to obtain that nuclear screeching sound, you need distortion. Don't muddle the notes with overt gain and fuzz, but find a nice medium. It will keep the artificial harmonic from going "BOING" and instead make banshee velocity shrieks.
Step2
Make sure to set your guitar to the lead pickup. Depending on the quality of your pickups, you may be able to get a decent artificial harmonic out of the rhythm pickup, but why settle for decent, when it could be blistering?
Step3
The most important step: Hold your pick with a tight, close grip. Expose as little of the pick as possible. The actual artificial harmonic is formed by combining a short downward picking motion, followed immediately by a bump with your thumb (the knuckle or between the knuckle and tip). The pick should almost scrape the string and with the extremely close grip your thumb will hit the string next. The two should hit so quickly, in fact, that they almost hit at the exact same time.
Step4
Vibrato. Depending on your riff, artificial harmonics almost always sound better with a little vibrato.
Step5
Practice. Practice. This may take several tries before you hit it just right but keep trying. It's a simple, quick flick of the wrist. The artificial harmonic is a great tool in your lead guitar arsenal no matter what style music you play.