Artificial harmonic technique

[Oscar South]

My currant artificial harmonic technique (thumb as node, pick with fingertip) is limiting what I can play so I'm about to sit down and try to work out a technique that'll allow me to play fast fluid runs and at minimum be able to double stop harmonics on 2 strings at the same time with a fretted note also sounding.

I'd be interested to hear about the techniques some other people use.

[alankroeger]

I haven't gotten too far with this technique I have been practicing but there are a few options here. I actually came up with a peculiar technique on guitar first, could be someone else, better, does this already but I self discovered accidentally.

I found I can do a slant barre with the thumb on major and minor third intervals and do harmonics on both strings. I do however use two fingers to pluck on the bass and get harmonics on both strings. I have seen acoustic guitarist do gliding sweeps with the index finger producing harmonics and gliding to different positions to get the harmonic.

So there are a few approaches to getting harmonics but for an harmonic interval doing a slant with the thumb works. Hey any technique takes practice to get it to work you can use the thumb or another finger (normally index) to stop the note.
Just as a reference Console (non pedal) and lap steel players do slants with there slide bars.

[Oscar South]

What I've been working on is a Steve Bailey style technique where I pick the notes with my little and ring fingers (standard finger-alternating technique) and use my pointing and middle fingers as nodes, this allows reasonable speed and theoretically allows you to double stop a wide range of intervals as you have 2 nodes and 2 picking fingers, I haven't developed the dexterity yet to perform that reliably though.

[alankroeger]

I haven't got the right pickup for good harmonics I always found that a bridge pickup, like a J bass type, worked best on guitars. It seems that a P type or any pickup, guitar or bass, not near the bridge will not give you good harmonics if you stop the string behind the pickup. I reference behind the pickup as being the area between the pickup and bridge and in front as any area between the fingerboard and the pickup. This seems to be related to a lack of enough motion in the string for the pickup to generate a loud signal, it holds true for guitars too. If you take a Strat style guitar and use only the middle pickup your harmonics are very weak if not almost non existent.
Sweeps with the index finger seem feasible but I have not done much with this one myself on bass and only a bit more on acoustic and electric guitars. Because I am more guitarist then bassist I also use a modified classical guitar technique. So I use three fingers and a thumb I only just started double thumbing recently and it doesn't sound too much like Wooten either so I can't brag.

Oops found some grammatical errors and made corrections, hopefully I got most of them *shrug*

[alankroeger]

I just checked out this Steve Bailey Video on youtube and it seems he is doing a sweep with the index finger in the beginning of the video. Here watch it yourself he even seems to be barring with the index finger and possibly using a slant too, hard to be exactly sure...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WynyclRao34