How to Play Harmonics on Acoustic Guitar in 3 Steps

Nice — thanks! I think that it’s also useful to understand what is happening to the vibration of the string when we play a harmonic. When we play a 12th fret harmonic we make a fixed point (like at the nut and bridge) at the middle of the sting and so it vibrates in a kind of wave form with the top half of the sting moving up and down in sync with the lower part moving down and up. When we play a 7th fret harmonic we make a fixed point one third of the way along the string and it vibrates in a 3-part wave form with the top and bottom thirds moving up in down in sync with the middle third moving down and up — so there is actually a second fixed point two thirds of the way along the string. You can check this out by playing the harmonic using your finger on the other fixed point which should be about half way between the 19th an 20th frets. You will also find that when you play the harmonic the regular way you can touch the string there without deadening the note. Finally, when we play a 5th fret harmonic we divide the string into four with fixed points at the 5th fret (created by our finger), at the 12th fret and half way between the 12th fret and the bridge. At this point you may be asking yourself why I am telling you all this. Well, take a look at where the 3rd fixed point is on the string when you play the 5th fret harmonic, i.e., 3/4 of the way along the string from nut to bridge. It’s probably not too far away from where you typically pluck/strum. Now this is exactly the wrong place to pluck the string in this case, because that point on the string should not be moving. Instead, try plucking the string half way between there and the bridge, which will probably be somewhere near the bridge side of the sound hole. It is *much* easier to get the 5th fret harmonic to ring out if the string is plucked there. Sorry if I have been teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but this tip helped me a lot and I hope that it now helps someone else.