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3.2.3
Guitar Harmonics/ Overtones

Try this little experiment in guitar string harmonics (overtones):

Grab your guitar again. Acoustic or electric, it doesn’t matter. If it’s electric, plug it into an amp and crank it a bit. If you’re a keyboard player, borrow a guitar.

If you don’t know how to play guitar, that’s okay—you don’t have to know howto play to do this:

  • Tune the high “E” string down to “C” (Middle C). (Never mind why Middle C is called Middle C. Or why it vibrates at 261.6 Hz instead of some nice round number like 250. That’s coming up in a bit.)
  • Now pluck the string. When you do this, you set the whole string vibrating at 261.6 Hz.
  • If you look closely, you can observe the string blur, immediately after you pluck it. The blurring becomes less intense as the note dies away.

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