What are natural and fingered harmonics

Hi and welcome to virtualsheetmusic.com's Meet the Expert. My name is William Fitzpatrick and I am Professor of Violin at the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music at Chapman University in Orange, California. I'm as well Director of MusiShare in Irvine.

Well, why don't we have a look at harmonics. Now to really look carefully, we are going to have to understand that the function of the bridge is to stop the string from vibrating over here, on the backside. And then we have the nut here. It stops the string from vibrating in the head of the violin. So it means that the distance that we have, which is vibrating is from the bridge to the nut.

Now when strings vibrate, it's not just one circular vibration. It divides itself. For example, it divides itself at the halfway point, here approximately. So you've got this part vibrating, and then you've got this part vibrating. Not only does it divide itself at the halfway point, but into quarters. So you've got this part, vibrating, this part vibrating, this part vibrating, this part vibrating.

Now why is it necessary to understand that? Well, each of those points produces what we call harmonics. So, we've got an open G, and we go to that half way point, lightly put our finger, we get the harmonic from open G. You'll note that this is halfway. Halfway between the bridge and the nut. What happens if I go halfway between the bridge and the nut even more? I get the next harmonic. What if I go even higher? I get even more harmonics. So from here, all the way up, there are those harmonics, or that's where the string is vibrating.

Well, not only does it occur up there, it occurs down here. Now, if I go from here halfway towards the left and each finger, it's going to produce what we call then all of these harmonics together, natural harmonics. Why are they natural? Because they are all coming from, or being produced on an open string. Now, if I were to use my first finger, and stop the string, reduce the distance, right? Because it's not going to vibrate from that A, my first finger, to the knot. Now this my finger becomes the knot. Well, I too can get those harmonics, all of which are happening on the lower end.

Now, many composers have used both natural and fingered harmonics. For example, Bart�k, he wrote something from his Romanian folk dances, one whole movement using fingered and natural harmonics. Or you don't even have to... Go so closely to modern times. What about Mr. Sibelius, in his last movement, he used harmonics to go over the orchestra in this little part. Wow. These are both natural and fingered harmonics. If you have any questions about this, or comments, or any special requests, please feel free to post them on the comment section. So take care, and see you next time.

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