How To Harmonize Two Acoustic Guitars [4 ways To Try] (2024)

Playing good guitar and mastering the art of lead, harmony, and fingerpicking is what every guitarist desires. However, harmonizing is something that even guitar masters find hard to do. When you are out playing on stage, it is essential to harmonize your acoustic guitar with other acoustic guitars and even with lead guitars. But, do you know what harmonizing is and how to harmonize two acoustic guitars?

To Harmonize Two Acoustic Guitars, most professional guitarists use their ear power. However, at the beginning stage, you can either use intervals, and inversions or for best results, you can follow the riffs and licks of iron maiden. This is how you’ll be able to harmonize your guitars.

In music terms, harmonizing any musical instrument means synchronizing its tones. It allows the musicians to avoid destructive interference during jamming sessions and live on stage. When you are on stage, your instrument needs to create a constructive interference, and for this, one will have to harmonize each of their instruments. It can be acoustic guitar and lead guitar, lead and piano, and so on.

Therefore, below in the article, we will start with learning how we will be able to harmonize two acoustic guitars with ease and minimum effort.

Contents

Why Is Harmonizing The Guitars Important?

Harmonizing a guitar not only allows you to play good music but also helps you experiment with different musical notes and melodies at the same time.

When you have harmonized your instruments well, it means that you are good at playing different melodies and pitches at the same time. This would help to complete the octave, and it is done mainly through major chords.

Why Is tuning The Guitar Important Before Harmonizing It?

Guitar tuning is something that you cannot survive without. If your guitar is not tuned, then no matter how good you play, it will sound odd. So, if you are going to harmonize two guitars, ensure that they are well-tuned. It would allow you to harmonize the instruments with ease.

4 Ways To Harmonize Your Acoustic Guitar

Harmonizing two acoustic guitars is quite a hard nut to crack. However, here we will introduce you to some of the best ways to help you harmonize two of your acoustic guitars. So, follow the steps below to harmonize your guitars.

Harmonize with your hearing ability

This is something that can only be done if you are a professional guitarist. Harmonizing guitar is quite a hard thing to do. So, most of the professional guitarists, including me, do it with the help of our ears.

What you need to do is take both of your guitars and play a melody. Start it by the third fret on the first instrument and on the fifth fret on the second one. Remember that you will have to play the melodies on the notes of a major chord.

Now slowly play the lead or the chord and try synchronizing them with each other. It would take time, and you will have to try a lot of melodies and chord progressions, but you will get it.

If things are not working with the help of lead or normal chords, we suggest you try barre chords or power chords. Lastly, playing on the lower side of the fret is also a good way to harmonize two different guitars.

Learn the intervals and harmonize

Learning intervals is what you will learn at the later stage of your musical learning. Intervals are generally the musical difference between two notes. It is where your sound is produced, lowered, and arranged.

Hence, what you need to do is learn and get help from intervals while playing the guitars. Note down the musical changes between the intervals of both of the guitars you own.

Now, try different melodies, chord progressions, and notes on both of the guitars and check where the intervals are synchronized. This is the point you need to pay extra attention to.

Try and find out the similar sound between the intervals of both guitars, and you will be able to harmonize your acoustic guitars with ease.

However, you need to make sure that you are expert enough to read the intervals between the notes because a minor mistake can turn your constructive interference into a destructive one.

Inversions can help to harmonize two guitars.

When you are rearranging the notes of a chord to help the melody sound different and unique is called chord inversion. However, most of us don’t know that chord inversions can help you harmonize your acoustic or lead guitars.

Practice the riffs and licks of iron maiden

The riffs and licks of any melody are good enough to help you learn how to harmonize two acoustic guitars. Though the riffs and licks are mainly used in lead and electric guitars, you can harmonize the acoustic guitars with the help of licks and riffs too.

What you need to do is shift on the lower side of the fretboard and start playing some of your favorite riffs and licks. For this, we would ask you to take help from the iron maiden. They are the lords of harmonizing guitars with the help of riffs and licks.

Follow their main riffs and licks combination, play them with your guitars, and we are sure that you will be able to harmonize your acoustic guitar. However, for this, you will have to ensure to watch iron maiden to a level that you understand that playing style.

This is one of the simplest ways to harmonize guitar. Try it, and you will be able to harmonize your guitars with ease.

Is it possible to harmonize two guitars?

Yes, it is possible to harmonize two guitars. However, harmonizing two guitars is one of the hardest nuts to crack. If you are in the early stage of your guitar learning, harmonizing is going to be a tough task to perform.

For harmonizing two guitars, first, you need to make sure that your guitars are finely tuned and are close to each other.

After it, you will have to do a lot of things, including intervals and inversion reading. Along with it, you need to ensure that you have no capo applied because with a capo, harmonizing guitars is going to be a lot harder.

Lastly, you need to put sharp ears on the tunes of your guitar and how they sound while harmonizing and after harmonizing.

This is all that you will have to do while harmonizing two acoustic, semi-acoustic, or even electric guitars.

Can you harmonize two guitars with a capo on?

Well, for some using capo while harmonizing guitar is too difficult that they will never prefer using it. But, for some of us, a capo is the lifesaver while harmonizing two acoustic guitars.

With capo, you can shift your tabs and note some fret up or down. With this said, you will be able to harmonize your guitar quite easily.

Suppose you are jamming with your partner and both of you need to harmonize the guitar of G. So, with a capo, you can shift the chord some frets below, and your partner can play the original G.

Though it requires a lot of expertise, with a capo on, things will be easy for those who know how to place a capo perfectly for harmonizing two guitars.

Can you harmonize other musical instruments?

Yes, you can, but harmonizing a musical instrument is not as simple as it sounds. For harmonizing any instrument, you first need to have a strong grip over the notes of that particular instrument.

Along with it, one needs to understand how to read tabs and how to arrange different tabs for composition.

Moreover, you need to be an expert in sound synchronization for gauging the accurate sound while harmonizing the musical arrangement. So, if you know how to perform all of these things with perfection, you are good to harmonize any instrument.

However, if you have no idea about harmonizing, then it will be better to consult an expert for this task.

Conclusion

To conclude, we are good to say that this article has got everything to help you learn guitar harmonization. Therefore, what you need to do is follow the article religiously, and you will be able to harmonize the guitar with ease. But, if you still find it difficult to understand, let us know. We would come up with some of the easiest ways to help you harmonize the guitar.