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what is this called (chime sound)

truckin88

truckin88

Oct 18, 2001
1,186
12
42
Newburgh, NY
#1
I have pplayed bass for about 8 years, but pretty much finger and pick, no slap (but have been getting into it), anyways when I was chilling with a guy who is a bass player I heard him messing around, it was like he put his finger over the fret without pressing all the way any plucked it to get a chime/bell sorta sound, what is that called, and how do you get it.
 
#2
It's called a harmonic. If you do a search in the Technique forum for "harmonic", you will have more material than you probably ever wanted about them.

edit: You have the gist of it, though. If you place your left hand finger over certain frets (try the fifth or the seventh) but do not press down, you can pluck with your right and get the harmonic. The threads in the Technique forum go into much more detail.
 
#4
Harmonics are an effective tool for tuning your bass to itself.

Play one on the 7th fret of your A string, and let it ring while you play a 5th fret harmonic on your E string. You basically want to eliminate any 'waves' that you hear.


Play around on individual strings for harmonics as well. The easiest places to get them are at 12, 9, 7, 5 and 4 1/3. After that you can get them at 2 3/4, 2 1/2, 2 1/3 and 2. In order, the intervals that you get from those harmonics(relative to the open string) are: Root, 3, 5, root, 3, 5, b7, root, 9.

Then you can combine harmonics from different strings to get cool chordal things. Play a G note on the low E, and get harmonics from the 5 frets of your G & D strings. Instant G chord. Play those harmonics again at the 4th fret instead, and you've got a major 7 chord.

Check the links these guys gave you and experiment with it. It's not necessarily applicable in every style of music, but every now and again a 'sprinkle of tinkle' adds to the vibe.
 
#5
I thought it was called harmonics but when I looked it up in search I got a lot of irrelavent stuff. I have been trying to get the sound out my fender p bass which I just setup, basically have it on 5/7/12 on G and D strings. I will definatly be reading about these.

As for not hearing about it, I have only taken guitar lessons when I was way younger, dropped the guitar for the bass cause the sound was awesome. I am self taught, but when you only listen to metal, hardcore, and some punk, when are you really gonna hear about or care about a harmonic. I have recently crossed over to jazz and blues, wanted to broden my horizons, and I finally heard it.

thank you guys for all the information
 
#7
lemur821 said:
In my experience, metal, hardcore, and punk guitarists are the one group of guys who don't ever shut up about harmonics, so I'd expect you would have heard of them. Weird. Anyway, now you know. :)
Click to expand...

Yea, while maybe not played too much on the bass, many metal guitarists use harmonics on a regular basis. There aren't too many Metallica songs without a harmonic in there somewhere. At least, that's the way it looked when my guitarist friend and I used to get together to jam along with metal CDs.
 
#9
SuperDuck said:
Next time you post a question, I'm going to say, "No offense, but you've been playing for X years and you've never heard of of a blank?"
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i hate to admit it but for the FIRST time since i first read his first post (first to me) whafro is right 8 years is way too long for not knowing about harmonics, i dont mean i know everything but this particular thing is a newbs thing.
 
#10
sorry i don't know anything, as i stated before, I thought they were called harmonics cause of guitar but in doing a search, (yes I sued the search button first) I got a bunch of unrelated stuff that made me think other wise. My main experience with harmonics is the band unwritten law they use it alot but on guitar, in fact I think they made a song about it.


also to many people rip off someones head for not knowing something, if this is the case what is the point of a forum at all
 
#11
truckin88 said:
sorry i don't know anything, as i stated before, I thought they were called harmonics cause of guitar but in doing a search, (yes I sued the search button first) I got a bunch of unrelated stuff that made me think other wise. My main experience with harmonics is the band unwritten law they use it alot but on guitar, in fact I think they made a song about it.


also to many people rip off someones head for not knowing something, if this is the case what is the point of a forum at all
Click to expand...

nothing at all against you, talk bass is here for us bassist to have a very nice and complete data base abut whatever related with bass, BTW were free to coment things like this the same way youre free to post questions like that one, is just that we felt curious.
 
#12
i dont really hear harmonics much on bass in this style of music

EXCEPT: the only one that comes to mind is Billy Sheehan listen to some of his solo pieces, he puts a little distortion on them and the harmonics just scream out...

as for guitarists go just about everybody uses this trick, Edward Van Halen pretty much wrote his book on these tricks...






lowendgod
 
#15
Kevjmyers said:
Now ARTIFICIAL harmonics...that's a whole 'nother can o worms.
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isn't that practicly(sp?) a refret? you fret string on a fret so that the string starts there where you fret it... sorry for the terrible explination... theoreticly that would work wouldn't it???

sorry if i'm a little unclear on that and if it makes no scence, but it should, shouldnt it?

thanks

alexx
 
#17
The Artist said:
isn't that practicly(sp?) a refret? you fret string on a fret so that the string starts there where you fret it... sorry for the terrible explination... theoreticly that would work wouldn't it???
Click to expand...
You've got it right. The fret you've fretted the string at acts just like the nut did, but everything is scooted up the neck and up in pitch a little bit.
 

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