Pinched harmonics.
Whenever I think of pinched harmonics the
first person I think of is Billy Gibbons the
guitarist for ZZ Top.
A lot of other great players have made nice
use of pinched harmonics as well.
One of the things to keep in mind is that
there are harmonics five, seven, and twelve
frets away from every note as well as in other
positions.
For more details, I did do another Howcast
lesson on harmonics, so you should check that
out.
Let's look at the position of the second fret,
F sharp minor.
My clearest harmonics here are twelve frets
away.
That's the fourteenth fret.
So, just for demonstration, I'm going to use
my first finger and I'm going to pick each
harmonic.
If I were to tap those it would sound like
this.
Okay.
So, these aren't good for pinched harmonics
because it's very hard to pick up here.
What I want to do is go twelve frets higher,
right.
One two three four five six seven eight nine
ten eleven twelve.
Now, here I start to run out of room.
So, I have to use the pick-up or the body
of the guitar to memorize where I am.
Now, using pinching technique I can find the
harmonics.
So, I'm just picking the note.
As I pick the note my thumb is supposed to
go over the harmonic.
Now, I have to find this.
No.
There we go.
Okay.
So this is easy to remember because on this
guitar it's pretty much right in the line
of the pick-up.
On another guitar it might be above the screw
of the pick-up, and it's going to be in a
different place for each key.
A big part of this is memorizing where the
harmonics are on the guitar.
But since I know where the main harmonic is
for F sharp I can figure out where the rest
of the notes are.
Alright, it's rough, but basically that's
this pentatonic and harmonics.
When playing pinched harmonics it really helps
to be on the treble pick-up.
It helps to have a lot of distortion, too.
I can continue through the scale and play
harmonics.
Okay.
Having mapped out the harmonics I can now
play some licks and just throw in pinched
harmonics here and there.
Check 
it out.
So, with pinched harmonics you sort of have
to guess where they are.
You're not going to nail them every time,
but when you do nail them they sound cool.
I hope you've enjoyed this lesson on pinched
harmonics.
