Hello All-
My question is about harmonics. I'm looking at the chords/tabs for The Black Crowe's "She talks to Angels" in the June/July2005 issue of GuitarWorld Acoustic (Eagles on cover).
Tuning is Open E, and the intro shows the following:
E F#m11 E F#m11 E *E(harm.) *B(harm.) E F#m11 E F#m11 E
- - As the chord diagrams are listed at the top of the page, the chord diagrams for *E and *B show full barres across 5 strings at the 12th and 7th frets respectively, but the fretted strings in the diagrams are indicated by hollow cicles rather than black circles as with other chords.
In the actual tabs for the same song, these chords are noted as N.H.
I believe they are also to be played with a bit of an accent on the down stroke regarding the strum pattern as indicated by a ">" over the chord shape.
They seem to also be related to sustained notes???
Can someone help explain this to me? How do I play these chords?
Is anyone familiar with the specific piece in Guitar World Acoustic? (believe it or not I have additional questions about this arrangement of this song).
Hope I've made sense. Thanks in advance!
-B
Harmonics are bell-like tones that you get from getting the open string to vibrate for less than its full length.
If you touch a string - not fret it, but just touch it very lightly - right above the 12th fret (the fretwire itself), and pick the string, it should sound one octave higher than the open string, and it'll sound 'lighter' or 'airier'... very different from the open string. That's a harmonic.
So the E* chord is a five-string E chord played in all harmonics. You're in open tuning, so that's pretty easy.
The B* chord is a little different. Same technique, but the sound will be higher than it was at the 12th fret. The reason for this is in how harmonics are produced... the 12th fret (for E*) divides the string exactly in half, which raises the tone by an octave. When you play harmonics at the 7th fret, you'll divide the string exactly in thirds - and the harmonic of 1/3 of the string will be an octave and a fifth above the open string, giving you the B* chord.
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Thanks NoteBoat. This is starting to make sense. In hindsight, I did a search for harmonics on the GN search tool and came up with a post that included some great explanations by Greybeard and Pilot.
Sorry for the duplication, but glad I got this additonal input.
-B
