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Guitar chord forum - chordie → Electric → Quick question on electric playing
When someone is riffing with lots of distortion and they make that squealing sound with the string, how is that accomplished? Is this a pick harmonic?
I suspect you are thinking of feedback. You often hear it at the end of a sustained note. It happens when the amp is loud enough to cause a feedback loop through the guitar body and pickups. You can accomplish this at somewhat lower volumes by touching the headstock to the speaker cabinet as a note sustains. Lots of preamp gain will also make controlled feedback easier to get.
Alternately, you may be hearing 'false harmonics' like in many ZZ Top recordings. This is accomplished by choking up on the pick so that only a little of it sticks out between your fingers and thumb. When you pick, allow the flesh of yoru thumb to follow the pick and just brush the string. With a gainy tone, this will generate crazy harmonic tones that will be one or even two octaves above the fretted note. At times, the tone is not even musically related to the fretted note.
I thought that it might be due to feedback...thanks!
It's actually called 'artificial harmonics' and DrewDuncan gave a nice discription of the technique.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Harmonics
So I assume you need fairly powerful pickups and a good amount of distortion to do these? So they probably wouldn't work out to well on a guitar with lipsticks, right?
Actually, once you get the hang of the technique, you can do it on an acoustic. Distortion just helps the wild, high insect noises really pop out.
I find that these squeals are easiest when using the bridge pickup and heavy distortion. As you pick the string, hold your thumb right on the end of the pick so that when you pick, your thumb mutes the string. Finding the correct place to pick the string is very important too because if you mute the string in the wrong place, you will mute the standing waves that produce this squeal. Hold a note and try this pick/mute technique along the string until you find a place that produces overtones. I also find that it is easier to produce a squeal if you use vibrato with your fretting hand.
Guitar chord forum - chordie → Electric → Quick question on electric playing
