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How is armonico artificiale played?
Use the stopped finger as a movable nut and place a light touching finger at the notated node. The standard touch-four fingering sounds two octaves above the stopped pitch and is normally shown as a stopped note plus a diamond a perfect fourth higher; a touch-five relation can produce the twelfth but is less universally practical and must be explicit. Moving both fingers together makes chromatic harmonic lines possible, and coordinated finger motion can add vibrato, though vibrato is not a simple categorical divide from every natural harmonic.
How does armonico artificiale sound?
A pure, slightly more covered and pinched flute-like tone than a natural harmonic — the open string is no longer free, so there's less bloom — but it can sing chromatic melodies high above the staff, with vibrato, in a register otherwise impossible. Glassy, ethereal, and (sul tasto) almost vapour-thin.
In context
Vienna Symphonic Library describes the firmly stopped note plus a lightly touched node, usually a fourth above. Indiana University identifies touch-four artificial harmonics as sounding two octaves above the stopped pitch, and Dorico separates stopped, touched and sounding-pitch notation. The Italian Braille manual shows source-specific compound short forms, but no exact abbreviation reached three independent sources, so armonico artificiale remains written out.
Music theory and score context
See also
- String harmonic (artificial harmonics, touch-fourth) — Wikipedia
- Techniques of Strings, Part II (touch-fourth, diamond notation) — Young Composers wiki
- Artificial harmonics notation — Steinberg Dorico documentation
- Vienna Symphonic Library Academy — Violine
- Steinberg Dorico Pro 6.1 — appearances and styles of harmonics
- Indiana University, Instrument Studies for Eyes and Ears — Viola: Harmonics, Glissando & Vibrato