Have you ever read a “P.H” in a tab and don’t know what it means?
No, “P.H” doesn’t stands for “Punish Heathens” or something like that… it means “Pinch Harmonic” a.k.a “Pick Harmonic” or “Artificial Harmonic”, its a picking induced harmonic.

We already learned how to play nice Natural Harmonics and today we will learn how to play badassed Pinch Harmonics that will make your guitar scream like a beast.

Basically you get these squeals happening by picking the note so that the side of your right thumb (if you’re right handed) hits the string at the same time as the pick does… exactly where you pinch the string determines what kind of squeal harmonic you’ll get happening. There’s more than one “squeal spot” per note and string and you can miss the spot too, so try different positions to find your sweet spot.

Distortion and bridge pickup helps a lot with this, so crank your distortion and use your bridge pickup with you’re practicing Pinch Harmonics, they’re much more easier that way, try this picking technique all over the area between the pickups.

Maybe you won’t get this at the first time, but practice and spend a little time with this and you’ll master Pinch Harmonics!

Here’s a video that will help you to understand what i’m talking about:

Find your guitar’s sweet spot! and there’s more than one per string so find them all! Squeal Harmonics are one of my favorite guitar techniques ever.

Maybe if don’t feel prepared you’ll need to take more guitar lessons or learn natural harmonics first… keep playing guitar and master Pinch Harmonics!

If you have any question about harmonics leave a comment and i’ll answer it!

Related posts:

1. How to Design your own guitar step by step – part iv
2. Learn How to Play Natural Harmonics
3. Learn How to Play Lead Guitar Techniques
4. Learn How to Play Arpeggios on Guitar
5. Learn how to play Power Chords in guitar

Tags: guitar, guitar lessons, guitar squeal, learn how to play pinch harmonics, learn pinch harmonics

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 2:10 am and is filed under Guitar Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.