Artificial harmonics

Most lap/pedal steelers use their palm for that. It takes a bit of practice, but it's worth it since it enables you to strum across all strings - or pick selected notes - while playing harmonics. I believe most instructional DVDs for electric or acoustic lap steel covers this (I know for sure Bob Brozman's does).

Steinar

When I get around to writing a review of Hawaiian Steel Guitar by Stacy Phillips, I'm going to mention it's not for beginer lap steelers :P
Thanks Steinar, I'll keep at it.

Bob Brozman does this extremely well and shows how in his Bottleneck Blues DVD set. I imagine that he uses it mostly in Hawaiian music (he is extraordinary!! If you are not familiar with his playing you should hear it)

This DVD set focuses alot on techniques for clean bottleneck/blues slide playing.

As I remember it: Basically in an open tuning you can just brush the outside edge of your palm, (the karate chop edge behind the pinky finger) downward across the strings, (at the 12th fret for example) while using index finger of the same hand to lightly strum between the edge of your palm and the nut. You can do it at the 5th, 7th or 19th fret also in the open position. Lets focus on the 12th fret fro reference.

THEN you can either bar or use a slide moving up the fretboard, at first fret, second fret, third fret, etc. and just move your right hand up above the twelfth fret to correspond to the (octave) from the fret the slide is on, ie; 13th 14th 15th fret etc., and get a harmonic from any of the lower frets (or anywhere in between frets when using a slide).

For example with the slide directly above the 3rd fret your palm would brush across the 15th fret.

If I understand what you are asking I think the trick is to just brush your palm across the strings (instead of pressing and releasing the palm) while lightly strumming them with the top of the index finger, this finger will be curled back toward the thumb. (at least thats the way I do it) I have long fingered hands so if I am brushing my palm across the 12th fret my index finger is strumming around the 8th fret.

Once you get the ringing harmonic you can slide it up as far as you want. From an open position Mr Brozman shows a technique where he places the slide behind the nut, strikes the harmonic and then slides it all the way up the fretboard. He does all of this extremely well and gets alot of volume and sustain.

It is really quite easy and you can also just strum a few strings like 1,2 qnd 3. The technique is easy but to have control will take some practice. You can also get the other harmonics the same way, like at 5th and 7th frets in open position, just moving the palm up the right corresponding distance from where the slide or fretted notes are. I don't know the technical terms for all that stuff, so maybe someone else will explain it better

I did not plan on having much use for harmonics in blues so I haven't messed with those but that is what I recall from the DVD. I'll put that DVD on later and review it to see if I explained that right.

Let us know when you get it
ADDED on EDIT: I didn't know you were playing Lapsteel, I don't know anything about that other than a bit that I read. I was referring to bottleneck.

Either way it seems to be working though I can't do it consistently yet. It is a beautiful sound when hit properly though, wow.