# Violin artificial harmonics



## N.Caffrey (Oct 19, 2018)

Hi, could someone help me with violin artificial harmonics? I know the correct notation requires to have the note you want to play written 2 octaves below, with a squared note a perfect fourth above. 
This works for high notes, but for lower notes how should I approach this? As I should use a Bass clef to have the note 2 octaves below.
I've attached a screenshot of where I have arrived so far (the ones I'm interested into are the ones with a circle on top)

Thanks


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## resound (Oct 19, 2018)

A violin can't play, for ex., the Gb in m11 as a touch 4 because the root note is out of range. To play the harmonic, they have to put their first finger on the lower note, and place another finger just above the string a perfect fourth above, so the bottom note needs to be in range of the instrument. There are other ways to produce harmonics, for ex. the Eb in m13 could be produced as a touch-5 on Ab (same idea as touch 4, but playing the low Ab and touching the Eb above). Here is a reference for some different ways to produce harmonics - http://www.musicalobservations.com/publications/harmonics.html - I hope that helps!


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## N.Caffrey (Oct 19, 2018)

resound said:


> A violin can't play, for ex., the Gb in m11 as a touch 4 because the root note is out of range. To play the harmonic, they have to put their first finger on the lower note, and place another finger just above the string a perfect fourth above, so the bottom note needs to be in range of the instrument. There are other ways to produce harmonics, for ex. the Eb in m13 could be produced as a touch-5 on Ab (same idea as touch 4, but playing the low Ab and touching the Eb above). Here is a reference for some different ways to produce harmonics - http://www.musicalobservations.com/publications/harmonics.html - I hope that helps!



Thank you for the detailed explanation and for the link! Makes sense, actually the problem I found out was that for some reasons, maybe due to keyboard convenience, the note pitch was one octave higher than what it appeared on the midi block, so when I exported it also was one octave below. I therefore changed it. I have attached a new screenshot, is it now playable? Also, if amongst them there are notes that can be played with natural harmonics, should I notate them as such, or violinists prefer to have everything artificial if the majority of the notes are played that way? I'm going to read the article now thank you.


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## resound (Oct 19, 2018)

Yup, that is all playable! Probably best to keep everything as touch 4 for consistency in sight reading and in tone. String players see this all the time and they are used to playing it. One minor notational thing - get rid of the extra accidentals on the notes that tie across the bar line, for ex. the Db in m6


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## N.Caffrey (Oct 19, 2018)

resound said:


> Yup, that is all playable! Probably best to keep everything as touch 4 for consistency in sight reading and in tone. String players see this all the time and they are used to playing it. One minor notational thing - get rid of the extra accidentals on the notes that tie across the bar line, for ex. the Db in m6



I will! Thank you again, always learning new things


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