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Re: Waves



"D.V.N.Sarma" wrote:

You can show to the students the presence of harmonics by
gently touching a vibrating wire where the harmonic has a node.
This will quench the vibrations of other harmonics which do not
have a node at that point. By this method you can supress the
fundamental and make the student to listen to the second harmonic
by gently touching the wire in the middle and so on. Higher harmonics
are feeble and therefore one has to listen to them carefully.

"Playing harmonics" is a way that many guitar players spice up their
sound. Many techniques have evolved for both right and left hands.
With the right hand one fairly easy thing to do is press a node with the
outside edge of your hand and pluck the string using the index finger or
a pick held by the index finger and thumb. When playing without a pick
I place my thumb on the node and pluck with my index finger. With the
pinching effect you can choose to pluck the string "harmonic" with the
index finger then pluck the string immediately after with your thumb.
The effect of getting the open string with the harmonic emphasised makes
it sound almost as if you played two strings.

One thing a lot of beginners fail to realize is that when trying to play
harmonics it is important to not only hold one finger on a node, but to
pluck at an antinode. Take a guitar and hold a finger against a string
above the 5th fret. The two other nodes for this harmonic are the 12th
and 24th frets (the fret itself may not exist on your guitar, but this
is the location). Now pluck the note at locations along the length of
the string. The loudest sounds come at antinodes, and the harmonic
doesn't sound at all from above 12 and 24. Hence, knowing the whole
shape of each harmonic is important to playing them effectively,
especially since the 24th fret is near where people generally pluck the
strings. The higher the harmonic, the more likely you are to be
plucking near a node if you're not careful.

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Doug Craigen
http://www.dctech.com/physics/