Dividing the guitar string into 3 equal parts

Now play the harmonic at the 7th fret. What is happening here is that the string is ringing in 3 equal parts. There are 2 nodes, one where you touched the string at the 7th fret, and another at the 19 fret.

If you go to the 19th fret you will notice that the harmonic is exactly the same at the 7th. After you play the harmonic at the 7th fret, try touching the string at the 19th fret. You will notice that nothing happens. This is because the string is not ringing at that point. But if you touch the string in at any point other that the 7th or 19th frets, the string will stop ringing.

Watch this video that shows playing the natural harmonics at the 7th and the 19th frets.

(112k)
get realplayer

Dividing the guitar string into 4 equal parts

Next play the harmonic at the 5th fret. In this case the string is ringing in 4 equal parts. When you played the harmonics at the 7th and 19th frets, you got the same exact harmonic at both of these nodes. In this case, only the 5th fret and the 24th fret will sound exactly the same, and the 12th fret will sound an octave lower. So even though the 12th fret is a node, and is a part of the string that is not ringing, you can not get the same harmonic as the 5th fret to ring there. A little confusing, I know. It all has to do with physics, and I don't want to get to much into that in this lesson.

Note that most guitars do not have 24 frets, but the node is where that fret would be.

Page 3, how harmonics work

Page 5, Dividing the guitar string into 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 parts