Finger Twisting Exercise

Here is an exercise that looks quite simple but yet can offer you so many things for your fingers to learn. Practice this as much as you can to bring more finger independence. Here you go.

Harmonics on Guitar

Harmonics are played every time you pluck a note. Most of the time, however, you do not hear them. What you hear is the fundamental (sometimes called the first harmonic). The fundamental is the loudest sound produced, but it is accompanied by several harmonics. "Playing harmonics" on guitar is actually playing "artificial harmonics." Basically, it is a way of eliminating the fundamental and the other overtones. It produces a nice effect that many guitarists like to use. There are several ways to play these.

OPEN-STRING HARMONICS

Open-string harmonics are sometimes referred to as natural harmonics. To play open-string harmonics, you can place your finger lightly on the string in the places shown in the diagram below. Do not press the string down. It should not touch anything but your finger. By doing this, you will play the note shown in the diagram over the given area.

FRETTED HARMONICS

Playing fretted harmonics can be hard at times. This requires the fretting of a note, plus a "soft touch" on a string which is exactly 12 frets above the note you are fretting. In addition to this you must still pluck the string. To do all three of these tasks at once, you must combine the tasks of the "soft touch" and the plucking of the string. There are 2 techniques of doing this.

TECHNIQUE 1: ARTIFICIAL HARMONICS

Although all harmonics that you play are actually artificial harmonics, this technique is commonly referred to as playing an artificial harmonic. This technique requires that you "soft touch" with your index finger and then pluck with your pinky finger or a pick held in the other fingers. The other technique is playing a pinched harmonic which is more difficult to learn but will allow you to play fretted harmonics more quickly once it is mastered.

TECHNIQUE 2: PINCHED HARMONICS

This is a difficult technique to master. Consistent playing of pinched harmonics requires that you use a modified picking technique along with a steady and accurate picking hand. The first thing that you must master is how to hold the pick and pluck the string. You hold the pick by having the pick barely clear the bottom of your thumb. The key is to pluck the string with the pick but have the thumb immediately hit it to produce the harmonic. This pick and thumb should hit the string almost simultaneously.

You must also know where to pluck the string. If you do not hit the "sweet spot" on the string it will sound like a muffled note. The ideal place to pluck depends on where your thumb produces the harmonic. Your thumb should hit the string half way between the bridge and the fret that you are playing on. So when you play on different frets, you must also pluck in different places. This makes it a little harder to play.

Note: There are other sweet spots as well. The sweet spots are proportional to the length of the string. When you play open-string harmonics, there are several places that produce harmonics. These are the "sweet spots" for a full length string (open string). When you fret a note, all the "sweet spots" stay in proportion to the string length, which is the length from the fret you are playing to the bridge. Therefore, several "sweet spots" exist for both open-string and fretted harmonics. The one thing to remember is that they are not all one octave higher so hitting alternate "sweet spots" will play a different note.

SCIENCE OF HARMONICS

Did you ever wonder why a harmonic is produced? It's quite simple actually. It is a matter of string length. When you use your finger to produce a harmonic, you modify how the string vibrates. When playing open string harmonics, you split the string into halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, and sixths. So playing the harmonics at the 12th fret split the string in half. Playing at the 7th or 19th fret split the string into thirds, and so on. You will also notice that playing harmonics at the 7th or 19th fret are exactly the same notes. You can also split the guitar into fourths at the 5th fret or the 24th fret (or where the 24th fret would be if you don't have that many frets). Once again, harmonics at the 5th and 24th frets produce the exact same notes. Notice that the 12th fret isn't included because that splits the string into halves (larger subsections of the string).

So how does it work? Your finger acts as a pivot point for the string by forcing the string to vibrate in halves, thirds, fourths, etc. This cuts the wavelength in half, thirds, fourths, etc. Wavelength determines what the frequency of a note is, and frequency determines what note you are playing. Did you ever hear someone say to tune to A at 440? The 440 represents the frequency of the A note at the 1st string at the 5th fret. If you double that frequency, you will play an A that is an octave higher. This also cuts the wavelength in half. You might be able to see the relationship between frequency and wavelength. Frequency is inversely proportional to wavelength. This basically means that wavelength = 1 / frequency. In other words cutting wavelength in half with double the frequency, and cutting the wavelength into 1/3 will triple the frequency.

So why do all my strings make different sounds even though they are the same length? This occurs due to the tension on the string. Basically the tension of the string modifies how the string vibrates so that it has a different frequency. When you adjust the tension, you also change the diameter of the string. Stretching or tightening the string makes the diameter smaller.

Guitar Amplifiers

Many of you might be unaware that there are different types of amplifiers as far as there working principle is concerned. This subsequently affects the overall tone that you get from your instrument and hence it is advisable that you understand each type of amplifier clearly before investing.

There are three types of amplifiers. They are: Tube amps, Solid state amps and hybrid amps.

The tube amp uses one or more vacuum tubes to amplify the signal, while a solid-state guitar amp uses solid-state electronics (diodes, transistors, etc.) to amplify the signal. On paper and in theory these two approaches should yield identical result, but in reality the difference in their tone is usually quite noticeable. The tube amps may requires greater maintenance and demand more investment but it is observed that they throw a warm tone as compared to tube amps.

Many amps are not simply tube or solid-state, but mixer of both kinds, called "hybrids." This usually means that they have a tube preamp stage, employing vacuum tubes in the tone shaping circuitry, but use solid-state circuitry for the power section. The hybrids are closer to full tube amps in response and tonal warmth, but purists will still find a difference between the two. Tube amps are generally more expensive in initial cost and to operate (because you need to replace the tubes occasionally), and solid-state amps are generally less delicate and more reliable. Many players, however, feel that tube amps yield a warmer, more musical tone and more musical-sounding distortion.

Yet another wrinkle is tube emulation circuitry. Many amps and preamps have sophisticated circuits designed to act like tubes, and as in all things, some are better than others. A relatively new development has been the introduction modeling amps, which not only emulate the tone and response of tubes, but of specific tube amps. In general these pretty exciting amps, but again, some are better than others at reproducing the specific models, and in maintaining the sounds through a range of volume levels.

Another point to make about tube amps is that bigger is not always better. You get the most distinctive tube sound when the amp is cranked up enough so the tubes are saturated or nearly saturated, creating the overdriven sound revered by tube-amp fans. For this reason, it is often better to choose a lower wattage amp over a higher wattage amp, depending on how and where you play. By the time you crank up your 60- watt amp enough to saturate the tubes to get just the right level of distortion, you could be blowing your audience out the back door. It might have been better to choose a 20W amp that lets you get your saturated tone without the ear-killing decibels. Many professional guitarists prefer this approach both for recording and performance situations. They use close-miking to capture the overdriven sound of smaller tube amps, sending that signal to the recording console or the PA mixer.