Chord Muting and Palm Muting
Chord Muting
Previously we noted that if any of the strings we wanted to play were muted whilst fretting a chord, an undesirable dead sound would be produced by that string and hence affect the whole sound of the chord being played. But this effect can be applied to chords where there are strings that we don’t want to play and hence eliminate any extra tones sneaking into the chord your intending to play.
This can take a bit of practice to get used to, and lends itself easily to some chords and not so easily to others. The principle behind it is to use any free fingers you have to gently touch any unwanted strings (without pressing them down to the fret board) so as to mute them.
As an example, whilst playing a D major chord, you don’t want the Low E and A strings to ring out. In this case (depending on the size of your hands), it may be possible to use your thumb to mute at least the Low E string and possibly the A string by bringing it over the top of the fret board. This can be applied to other chords fairly easily.
It is off note that if you pluck the desired amount of strings correctly every time, you shouldn’t need to do this, but in the real world, unless you are exceedingly brilliant at this, a few unwanted strings will creep in now and again (or at least they do when I play !).
This does not only apply to chords. It can be used during soloing for instance, where by in slower sequences, the fretting hand could be lowered to such and angle as to catch and hence mute other strings not being played. This is a bit trickier, but is possible. For example, if a few notes were being played on the D string, slant the fingers in a low angle so that they touch the G, B and High E strings. These are now muted and wont ring whilst playing the D string.
Another way of applying this technique is too use a finger on the rhythm hand to touch a string lightly to stop it ringing out. This is only really applicable in a song where there may be lots of time between chord changes or say when you are playing the last chord in a song that you would like to ring out. So if we were playing D major as our last chord, and we wanted it to ring out as long as possible, you would give it a good strum and then simply, keep the fretting hand holding the D major chord, lightly touch the Low E and/or A string with a finger on the rhythm hand to stop them ringing out, if they had also been plucked by mistake.
All of the above should give you an insight into muting unwanted strings, and it depends on how good you are and what you are playing as to how much you should apply the technique. I use it fairly regularly when needed, as I’ve all ready stated I can be pretty bad for hitting other strings by mistake and so I need to mute the others out.
Palm Muting
This is a technique that gets most of its usage during rock music, but can be applied to any style of playing. To palm mute, you need to hold the edge of your rhythm hand (same edge as the pinkie is on) against the strings (close to the bridge) whilst strumming and plucking. This should be fairly easy to do and a little practice will make it quite simple to apply.
In rock music this is used quite often during the playing of chords. If a lot of distortion has been used to produce a rock sound, wildly strumming the chords can be pretty crazy sounding (unless that’s what you want). If palm muting is used whilst strumming the chords, it cuts out a lot of the higher frequencies that are generated and effectively "tidies" up the sound produced. It is probably best that you just try this to see what I mean.
This can also be applied to picked single notes or what ever, and is not just applicable to when distortion is being used. Play around with it and see what you can produce.
An example of its use are Def Leppards "Animal" where it is used at various parts for rhythm during the song, particularly in the verses. Although it may be a little hard to hear in that example as there are a few guitar parts going on at the same time.
For an example of it being used cleanly (or with very little distortion, I cant tell !) listen to "Could you be loved" on the Bob Marley Album "Legend". The main guitar part in this is muted most of the way throughout the song.
