When I'm bored I often play around with harmonics on my piano.
I first lightly press a key so that no sound comes out but the damper is lifted. Then I either hold it there or use the sostenuto pedal.
Then tap a key of the same pitch for a natural harmonic or an interval such as a perfect fifth or fourth for an artificial harmonic. Th result is a floaty airy note.

I'm curious. Does anyone else do this and are there any pieces out there that actually utilizes piano harmonics?

The first composer that springs to mind is George Crumb.

Piano harmonics in his music are created in the same way as string harmonics i.e. touching different parts of the string to get different sounds. He uses a whole range of extended techniques, things like muting the strings, glissandi on the strings etc etc. It's really interesting to play but you need a grand where the sound board is stretched out in front of you to play around on. I imagine some of the things he does are achievable on an upright if you take the front off, but others are not.

The easiest set to listen to are probably something like "A little suite for Christmas". The "Makrokosmos" are also great pieces and most of them involve vocal effects on top of the piano stuff.

People wouldn't be happy if I shared the score with you, but I've copied the performance notes of Makrokosmos I for you to have a look at just for compositional interest =]


14854

I like to do that. It's very funny, if you play the note (for example a C), without sound, and after that you play a bass C, you can also hear the first note. But if you play Db, you can't.
I studied the harmonic series and how are produce. It's really interesting, I like to experiment with notes and its harmonics =3