What did Jaco do to make his harmonics stand out so much? :help:

He soloed the bridge pickup and plucked really hard.

Roundwound strings, playing close to the bridge, and having the bridge pickup all the way up are 3 things that come to mind.

A lot of it was in his hands and the way he played but...
On recordings he also used a studio quality tube mic preamp & compressor and many parts are double tracked.
Live he used several very large powerful bass amps and a touch of delay or chorus.

as far as the false harmonics goes Ive been messing around with them a lot lately and I think his technique gets the best results. He used his thumb out front and plucked behind it to create the harmonic as opposed to the techinque of putting your index finger tip up front. i find, with me at least, that my thumb bone gives a harder surface which can be contacted more firmly than the pad of my fingertip. just my two cents, i recently got do do some weather report with a bigband for the first time and so Ive been fooling around with it a little. As far as the natural harmonics, these guys are right, bridge pup and touch is what it all comes down to.

It's all in his fingers.

Jac(k)o's Fingers:
http://www.hairweb.de/images-stars/michael-jackson-prozess.jpg

:eek:

as far as the false harmonics goes Ive been messing around with them a lot lately and I think his technique gets the best results. He used his thumb out front and plucked behind it to create the harmonic as opposed to the techinque of putting your index finger tip up front. i find, with me at least, that my thumb bone gives a harder surface which can be contacted more firmly than the pad of my fingertip. just my two cents, i recently got do do some weather report with a bigband for the first time and so Ive been fooling around with it a little. As far as the natural harmonics, these guys are right, bridge pup and touch is what it all comes down to.


I'm not sure anybody's mentioned the big one :

Accuracy!

So Jaco was always incredibly accurate and you can try this for yourself - so the closer you are to the correct place and the louder the harmonics ring out - move away from that point and they get more muffled and die!

The mistake most people make is looking at frets - whereas all harmonics are about accurately (sub)dividing the working string length!

So - many of the harmonics that Jaco used were not exactly above frets and this is where people go wrong and get less clarity and volume than he did - even though they have the bridge pickup soloed and bright strings etc. etc.

Yes, accuracy is a very important part of getting them to sound good.

I'm not sure anybody's mentioned the big one :

Accuracy!

So Jaco was always incredibly accurate and you can try this for yourself - so the closer you are to the correct place and the louder the harmonics ring out - move away from that point and they get more muffled and die!

The mistake most people make is looking at frets - whereas all harmonics are about accurately (sub)dividing the working string length!

So - many of the harmonics that Jaco used were not exactly above frets and this is where people go wrong and get less clarity and volume than he did - even though they have the bridge pickup soloed and bright strings etc. etc.

You da' man!