So there you are listening to Dimebag squealing away with his harmonics and whammy bar and you are thinking dam that must be difficult (my thoughts when I first heard him). Ill admit I don’t think many people will get to his level of clarity and skill at the technique but anyway its worth trying to.

Firstly look at your guitar (if it is an electric guitar carry on reading if not don’t) and see does it have single coil or hum bucking pickups? It will be much more difficult to play on a guitar with single coil pickups but it can be done. Secondly look at the gain and treble toggles on your guitar and amplifier and put them up high to make it easier. Then look at your pickup selector and put it so that the bridge pickup is selected (also to make it easier).

Now we get down to the fun bit, make sure that there is nobody around because after a while it gets annoying and it can sound rather ugly . So this is how you do it (this is not the only way but this way works best for me): hold your plectrum (pick) in the normal position that you would to play above the g string halfway between the end of the neck and the bridge (the g string is the easiest string to get a artificial harmonic on). Next all you have to do is turn the plectrum clockwise with your fingers only and at a 45 degree angel diagonal to the string. Then for the finale just play the string with your thumb gently touching the string, actually don’t worry about the thumb it will come naturally. If you did this right a higher than normal note will ring out of your amplifier.

You can play one of those on any string on any position on the guitar (the high e and b strings are tricky). There are many different harmonics on one note just move your hand along the string and do the harmonic thing above.

Ok heres a close up video on the picking hand that shows how to do it:



Ok heres the video of the whole guitar:



I did the middle riff from Pantera's "Cemetary Gates" and the intro riff from Steve Vai's "The Animal".

Thanks hope you learnt something. Have fun with the squealing.