How to Play "Sanitarium" on the Guitar

Video Transcript

JOE WILES: We're counting down the top 80 most downloaded guitar tabs on the Internet. And we're now at number 56 with "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" by Metallica. Let's take a look at the guitar. Now, there's a technique you're going to want to learn when you're playing this song. It's called the harmonic. Normally, you'd put your finger on the 12th fret, press it down, and then you'd get a sound like this. Well, with the harmonic, you just lay your finger right above the fret, not behind it like you normally would, but right above the fret, and you hit the string. It sounds like that, and it will continue to ring as you lift your finger off. It's the difference between a fretted note and a harmonic note, okay? These occur on the 12th fret, the 7th fret, and the 5th fret. They sound like this. And if your guitar is distorted, you could even get more and they sound really wonderful. On this song, we're going to hit the low E string, open, and then we're going to answer that by hitting the harmonic on the 12th fret on the E string and the B string. Okay? We bring our hand down to the 3rd fret of the high E string. We're going to do a quick hammer-on and pull-off under the 5th fret. It sounds like this, and then we're going to slide our finger down to the 2nd fret, 3-5-3-2. In context, it sounds like...okay? Then we go back to the open E string. Hit those harmonics again, 3rd fret, 2nd fret, and then this time, we're going to hit the open E string--both open E strings at the same time. Okay? To continue, you go back to the harmonics, okay? This whole first bit, in context, sounds like this. And then hit all three high harmonics like that. In the next segment, we're going to go over the rest of the introduction to "Welcome Home" by Metallica. I'll see you there.

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