Device Lexicon: Part 6 - Artificial Harmonics Legato (feat. Hook)

In spite of the fact that it seems like every articulation of orchestral instruments has been sampled already, some even multiple times (like the infamous flautando overkill with Spitfire) there are still some articulations (particularly the non standard ones) that are not covered that well yet.

One of these are artificial harmonic legatos/glissandi on strings which to my knowledge only one commercial library has so far.

We get a lot of libraries that have harmonic sustains but there is something in the legato/glissando of this playing technique that creates some very cool effects and which are currently not properly possible to replicate with most libraries.

Before we talk about its use we have to quickly cover how these harmonics are produced. With string instruments we have natural and artificial harmonics. Natural harmonics are being created by lightly touching the string (not pressing it down) on certain nodes to force it to vibrate in a certain harmonic of the fundamental of its note. These harmonics cover only certain pitches and are not available chromatically.

Artificial harmonics are being created by pressing down the string to the fingerboard with the index finger and lightly touching the string at the same time with the pinky of the same hand at a specific position, very often the position of a fourth above that fingered note. Here's a video that quickly demonstrates the technique.

I don't want to go too deep into the technical side of things as I will cover this more detailed in the orchestration series but one thing that should be noted is that due to the left hand being "blocked" in this two point grip, legato on the same string can only be played by moving the entire hand and not like regular legato where players would often use a different finger for the next note. So an artificial harmonic legato always has some portamento/glissando quality when executed on the same string. This effect can be exploited by creating some eerie sounds.

We see these kind of artificial harmonic legati/glisses a lot in film music literature. I picked the cue Hook-Napped from Williams' score for Hook for demonstration purposes. This cue has obviously been heavily inspired by Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain but has as usual in such cases still some very Williams-y qualities. For the harmonics, let's focus on the passage starting at 1:19 where we can hear them quite exposed.

The score sheet for this passage looks like this (strings only):

We see both violins sections being involved into this. It's a bit hard to read but there always is a lower note and a diamond shaped higher note notated a perfect fourth higher. The resulting pitch is two octaves above the lower note. So the first constellation in bar 73 is a sounding D6 (C3 being middle C) in firsts and a G#5 in the seconds. Throughout this entire passage, Williams uses a lot of tritones between the two sections which creates this extra creepyness. In spite of no glissandi being notated the result of the legato is very much a glissando like tone which creates a lot of this eerie quality of this passage. 

From my own experience in recording passages like this, it takes excellent players or some practice to get this passage to sound this flawless. Transitioning from one harmonic to another on the same string is quite challenging as it is quite possible that the tone will break apart during the slide and also getting all violins to execute the legato exactly the same way (regarding speed and starting rhythmical starting point) is challenging so don't expect something like this to be a one-take.

And until now I don't think anything like this could be mocked-up convicingly with samples. Nevertheless, this is a great device for creepy passages and should be in the vocabulary for every film orchestrator and composer.