Pinch Harmonics

You’ve heard a guitar player make his or her guitar absolutely scream right? Well, that’s a pinch harmonic – and I’m gonna show you how to play one! As always, the TL;DR video lesson is available further down the page, or HERE. I even show you a ‘Satch Scream’!

I learned them when I was was about 13 years old, practicing in my bedroom. There wasn’t an Internet then… I didn’t even have any good books! There was just me, not playing guitar very well and accidentally hitting a string with my thumb while I was picking some blues lick… and out rings an almighty squeal! I realised fairly quickly what I’d done, but it took me ages to get it to happen again.

Awesome Pinch Harmonics

An awesome Pinch Harmonic can be yours in 5 easy steps:

1. Select your guitar’s Bridge pickup.
2. Choose the dirty channel on your amp, turn the gain up / hit the distortion pedal.
3. Hit a note.
4. Touch the string immediately after with your thumb.
5. Add some vibrato with your fretting hand.

Et Voila! Pinch Harmonics!

As you’ll have figured out, four of the five steps are a piece of cake. Number 4 in the list above is where its at.

It’s all in the Thumb

The key to nailing pinch harmonics is in your picking hand thumb. Start out by holding the pick normally, but close to the tip so your thump is sticking out a bit above the pick on a downstroke. You’re going to play a note with your pick but strike through the string, letting your thumb hit it immediately after. Start off using the D or G strings (the two middle ones on a six-string) on frets between 5 and 9 – the harmonics here are usually easier to grab!

When I teach pinch harmonics in face to face lessons, I have students play a note and try touching the string somewhere over the pickups – repeating the process until they find the place on their guitar where harmonics ring strongest. Once you get the hand of producing a harmonic in this way, it is easier to ‘feel’ progress toward pinch harmonics.

Experimenting with Pinch Harmonics

Depending on the note you’re playing, different guitars have different “sweet spots” for pinch harmonics. I tend to find the gap between neck and bridge on a humbucker type guitar is about right – but you’ll find you get different tones a you move around – you might find more than one option that works for you!

As you become more familiar with the technique playing one note, or across one string and start to move it around, you’ll find some strings and frets harder to get squealing. You can give yourself the best advantage by going back to the five steps, and getting as much gain as possible! The wound strings are usually hardest, but produce some of the best results, so persevere!

Eventually you can graduate to the ‘Satch Scream’, a move popularised by Joe Satriani, which looks cool and sounds comepletely ridiculous. Check out the video lesson below for more on the material covered so far, and the Satch Scream:

Once you are comfortable with smashing out the pinch harmonics, you’ll find some backing tracks to indulge yourself with over on my YouTube channel HERE. 

And that’s Pinch Harmonics! You can find more lessons on scales and guitar technique to help you develop as a player here. If you’ve got any questions please get in touch on Facebook or Twitter.