When playing a guitar, the higher up the fretboard you play, the higher the note. How come the reverse is true when playing the Harmonics (The next harmonic up the fretboard is a lower note than the previous)?
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First let’s establish that frequency (how many waves in a period of time) and wavelength (how long the waves are) are inversely proportional, meaning as wavelength decreases, frequency increases. If you’ve also ever seen a visual representation of a wave, you’ll know that the wave goes back and forth, but crosses the middle/zero. When you fret a note, you are essentially making the string shorter, increasing the frequency of vibration, making the pitch higher. Now when you pluck a guitar string there are many “standing waves” of different frequencies that together make the sound. There are several nodes, locations where the waves cross zero. You can think of the most prominent wave as the one that has a wavelength along the whole length of the string being played. This wave has nodes only on the ends of the string. The next wave has nodes on the end, but also a node in the middle (the 12th fret on an open string), and you can think of it as being half as long. When you lightly touch the 12th fret, you force the string to be still at that location, canceling out some waves. The waves at remain are the ones that have a node there. As you play harmonics lower down the fretboard, you are removing the larger waves and are left with smaller and smaller ones, so you hear higher pitches. This is also why harmonics can only be played at certain locations, dividing the string into halves at the 12th fret, thirds at the 7th and other frets, fourths at the 5th and other frets, etc.
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