After playing with pinched harmonics for ages, I recently, completely by accident, found palm harmonics.
Pinched uses the edge of the thumb to produce the node, while palm uses the palm for the same purpose.
Is one better than the other - easier to use, more effective? I feel that for all harmonics, the closer to the bridge the string is plucked, the easier it is to make them, so possibly palm harmonics is the way to go. But very few players seem to use them, preferring pinched instead. Why?
Is this on the electric guitar? I use palm harmonics when playing slide guitar with a thumb pick, and I believe that lap steel players use them. They're not as accurate as pinch harmonics, I would guess.
I am sure I've tried palm harmonics, but I'm good with pinch harmonics because it's all done with a party of your body thats used to being used dexterously, the thumb. I'm sure many learn pinch harmonics by accident, with it being very close to how they normally pick.
Steel players usually have a bar in one hand and fingerpicks on the other, so the palm is the only skin available to get that effect.
It's all a matter of personal tastes, innate aptitudes, and reflexive habit.
To say one is better than the other would be to offer an opinion. To say one is easier than the other is to share your personal experience. And which one is more effective is completely up to the performer. (And the satisfied members of the audience as well, come to think of it.)
I think it's all a matter of how you were trained, or the culture in which you were raised.
The first few times I saw videos of Jeff Lynne (of ELO fame) playing guitar, I thought, "What the heck?".
He tends to play these interesting chords up the fret board wherein he hangs his fretting hand thumb up over the top to either barre the top string or two, or to achieve a muting effect.
The way most of us were raised, we would endeavor to achieve the same sounds using a conventional barre chord technique, using our fretting hand index finger as the movable nut.
Tomato-tomaahto. Whatever works, that's what gets the job done.
