Let’s talk about how to achieve pinched harmonics.
Pinched harmonics are a mystery to so many guitarist, I’ve lost count at the amount of times I’ve been asked about them by students.
First of all, it’s important to understand that pinched harmonics (or artificial harmonics) are actually achieved in a very similar way to natural harmonics.
We all know that we can pick an open strings and tap that string at a certain fret to achieve a natural harmonic.
Well you can do that and tap harmonic points around the pickups.
These are the harmonic points we’re going to be targeting with pinched harmonics.
But instead of picking a string and activating harmonics by tapping, we’re going to pick the string and activate harmonics by hitting them with the thumb of our picking hand.
This should be done with one pick stroke, you should pick the string in such a way that it slaps back against your thumb and activates the harmonic.