What does the caret symbol ^, mean in guitar tablature?

Question

I'm reading a piece of acoustic guitar music containing both tablature and standard music, and I've come across a symbol I'm unfamiliar with in the tab.

^

The tab shows:

0^24 but the ^ is on top of the numbers in that the first "leg" lies on the 0 and the right "leg" lies on the 2 of the 24. The section immediately preceding the symbol is an arpeggiated chord

I've looked it up and people keep saying that it's usually a bend. Which in this case makes no sense (you can't bend an open string 2 octaves now can you?). This may be the case if writing a bend for Ultimate Guitar but a bend in true tab I've seen is usually a curved upwards line followed by 1/4 or 1/2 etc.

The music is very difficult to read in this case as it's quite compact and some symbols overlap so I can't tell the meaning of the tab symbol from that.

At first I assumed it was some kind of harmonic, so I was playing the natural harmonic at fret 12. But then later on I see <12> on the tab. Which I've always read as the natural harmonic at 12th fret.

So now i'm confused. Is it denoting some kind of pinch harmonic at "fret 24" (which my fringerboard length doesn't reach)?

Or is it a really short tie/slur?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Ah it seems to be just a short tie. Simply being a hammer-on from 0 to 2 and a quick 4 ie: --0h2-4--

Answer 2

It may be a hammer-on to the 24th fret.

Answer 3

This question is over a year old so you may have found it already. If not, the caret is usually found in music notation and, of course, would mean the same thing in tablature. It means, "a strong accent".

http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=16794