This weird tapping harmonic thing is a total mystery to me

Matt300ZXT

Matt300ZXT

Well-known member
So I'm trying to learn Hold On by Wilson Phillips, and a dude on YouTube has a video (I downloaded the GP5 file) of him playing a sort of 80s/90s mom rock sound. He has a part in the song where he is tapping harmonics. The GP5 file says he's making a 5th fret harmonic by tapping the 12th, 8th fret by tapping the 12th, and the 6th fret looks like it says tapping the 11.8th fret? lol I have no idea what that's talking about.

He's starting it around 2:26. I have seen my friend do that years ago when he was taking classical guitar lessons and his teacher was showing him something like this. I've seen videos explaining how EVH was doing it by tapping 12 frets above the note the left hand is fretting, but this guy appears to be doing something different.

 
It looks like he's laying his pointer finger on the octave up fret and then plucking it with his thumb. Is that the same exact thing, just maybe a cleaner way of hitting the note with less chance of other string noise?
 
Matt300ZXT said:
It looks like he's laying his pointer finger on the octave up fret and then plucking it with his thumb. Is that the same exact thing, just maybe a cleaner way of hitting the note with less chance of other string noise?
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Yeah he's just got his own version of the technique, I think.

I would mess with it, see if you like doing it the way he does? Either way, I guarantee you can make it sound good.
 
DanTravis62 said:
Yeah he's just got his own version of the technique, I think.

I would mess with it, see if you like doing it the way he does? Either way, I guarantee you can make it sound good.
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Ah cool, well thank you for clearing that up. I may have to run a compressor pedal to get a bit more even volume out when doing that technique compared to other just picked notes.

Two things happened today: I learned a new technique, and I made you listen to Wilson Phillips, even if for just a few seconds lol
 
Matt300ZXT said:
Ah cool, well thank you for clearing that up. I may have to run a compressor pedal to get a bit more even volume out when doing that technique compared to other just picked notes.

Two things happened today: I learned a new technique, and I made you listen to Wilson Phillips, even if for just a few seconds lol
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I would literally rather listen to Wilson Phillips entire discography than another EVH clip on RT if I'm being real.
 
Instead of tapped harmonics where you just smack the fret with your finger tip to sound it they're "harp harmonics" where you place your finger over the fret and strum it from behind with your thumb.

 
I always just slap it, but I'm a bassist, so I'm used to that shit. I might have to try that pluck method for harp harmonics on guitar.
 
I do this all the time…partly because I severed tendons in my right index finger in my mid 20s. So that finger forever points straight and when picking it points pretty much straight up the fretboard. So I decided to make my ‘handicap’ a strength of sorts. It is forever poised to tap softly. I can do it with or without pick.

Eric Johnson mentions this in his early instructional videos, he says he got it from Lenny Breau. He does a version where he plucks harmonics on low strings with his thumb and then mixes fretted notes up higher on the fretboard plucked with fingers, sounds like a freaking harp. He even calls it the harp technique. Then there is the Koto technique which is really cool too.
 
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Eric Johnson plays like this as well, never quite understood how some can do it so fast and clean, cool technique.
 
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