Follow along with the print-friendly PDF! It includes all of my notes for this lesson, allowing you to follow along at your own pace. You're free to download, print, and share the PDF across your devices.
It includes all of my notes for this lesson, allowing you to follow along at your own pace. You're free to download, print, and share the PDF across your devices.
In this lesson I’d like to share one of more valuable strumming tips I’ve learned & embraced in the last few years: palm muting! This is one I wished I learned years earlier, to be honest. I’ll show you how to execute palm muted strumming, talk about when to use it, and play several examples of different chord progressions & riffs - with and without palm muting.
Beginner Guitar Chords
Palm muting is an incredibly effective, relatively easy-to-learn strumming technique that can go a long way in mixing up the dynamics in your guitar playing. In short, it involves resting the fleshy part on the side of your strumming hand (between your pinky and wrist) against the saddle of the guitar - just where the strings connect. If done properly, any notes you play will ring in their normal tone but will be heavily muted. That is, they will be dulled, thudded, and otherwise more percussive instead of being bright, ringy, and sustained.
As I note in the video, as you move your palm up those first few inches away from the saddle (toward the top of the guitar), the mute quickly becomes more and more severe. In that, after 2-3 inches the tone of what you’re strumming may be lost entirely. Sometimes, this is good (full muted strumming can have great percussive effect) - but other times, it’s not ideal. Play around with your palm position - as if you’re fine-tuning a dial on a palm muting meter. Remember, with your palm resting up against the saddle, you’ll have the most possible tone sounding through… and moving away from the saddle dials down the tone while increasing the mute.
Straight up, this is your choice - there’s no wrong or right answer. Sometimes a song may call for heavy use of it, other times it may not be used at all. A good rule of thumb I’d suggest, which applies to anything with percussive dynamics: understand the role of contrast when you’re playing music. If a song uses a single chord progression and you play it exactly the same way throughout the song, this can come off as potentially boring and monotonous. Instead, try mixing it up. Maybe employ palm muting during the verses (dialing things down), and then let loose with full ringing strumming during the chorus (let it rock). This contrast can make the song sound more interesting, with natural ups and downs.
Fret Wrap, String Muter, Or String Dampener
I hope this was helpful for you. As always, it’s best to see my video lesson for reference. Please let me know what questions you have, and until next time - best of luck!
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Muting Strings Deliberately
Be sure to never miss a lesson by subscribing on YouTube. I put out 2-3 new videos every week. These include full song lessons, as well as covers, practice tips, behind-the-scenes updates. Thanks!Home > Rhythm > Beginner Palm Muting Palm Mute Guitar for BeginnersIn this lesson I'll be going through some effective palm mute guitar techniques that will get you playing with expert timing and accuracy.
Palm muting is a guitar technique used in all forms of music, but by far most religiously in rock and heavy metal.
It involves dampening the strings, not with your palm as the name suggests, but with the edge of your hand, and when coupled with high gain or distortion from your amp or effects pedal, you get a thick, percussive punch when you strike the strings.
Small Hand That Cannot Mute When Playing Funk
You should first rest the meaty part of the edge of your picking hand between the bridge and the first pickup - you should be able to feel all 6 strings along the edge of your hand.
What I tend to do is rest my pinky/little finger on the pick guard (you can just about see this in the photo on the left) to ensure I have all strings muted between the bridge and pickup.
With your picking hand, you want to strike the strings firmly to get a clean punch. Just a quick, sharp, percussive down pick like this.
F Zero Guitar Tab
That's a simple 4/4 timing there and you can just play the bottom E string to start with to find your sound. Of course, a metronome will help you to build up your speed gradually. How positioning affects palm muted tone
There is a way to define the texture of your palm muted riffs - how far your palm is positioned away from the bridge of your guitar. The further towards the guitar neck you mute the strings, the shorter and more percussive the mute sounds...
I mostly prefer a thicker sound, so my hand will rest almost on the bridge, but touching the strings just enough to partially mute them.
Metal Guitar Riffs Using Palm Mute Technique
Once you feel you're up to speed with the above, take a look at the exercise below which is a little faster.
The exercise above should have helped you to get that initial timing. But obviously if there's going to be any sort of movement in your music, you will need to change between different strings using this technique.
When changing toanother string (e.g. changing from a powerchord on the 6th string to a powerchord on the 5th string), you need to keep your hand in the same position, partially muting the strings.
How To Palm Mute: 8 Steps (with Pictures)
As well as changing chord/strings whilst palm muting, you also need to be able to stop and start the muting in a riff to create more rhythmic effect.
This technique requires you to raise your hand off the strings at the appropriate time and then place it back in the same spot to mute.
To make sure this is accurate, only lift your muting hand off ever so slightly, but enough so you aren't muting the strings anymore.
Beginning Modern Guitar
Also, you need to synchronize removing your muting hand with a downstroke, so you hit the strings and pull your hand away almost at exactly the same time.
So on the diagram above, the red dots indicate where you need to lift off (unmuted) and downstroke. Follow it slowly, and use a metronome to build up your speed gradually. It's the only way to nail it at speed!
If you hit the strings whilst palm muting normally, the chord or string will still ring for a while, so to cut this off and create a stop we need to fully mute the string.
Legato Technique For Guitar
The best way to do this is to bring your fret hand into the action. You can use the fingers on this hand to simply lift off the fretboard but still touch the strings that were in the chord. As soon as you raise your fingers to just touch over the strings, they will be fully muted.
If, however, you are playing an open string (not fretted) you will need to bring down some available fret hand fingers to touch the strings and stop them.
As this is a very rhythmic style of playing, you can take it to another level and use your palm muting to enhance the attack and momentum of a riff.
Palm Mute On Sweep Picking
This involves you simply palm muting the 6th string in between non-muted chords or notes. It should fill a gap so short in the riff that it merely becomes a percussive fill...
You can just about catch a deep punch effect when the muting is applied, which gives the riff a real charge. Start slowwith a metronome and build up gradually.
Although this will be covered in more depth in the lead guitar section, it's important to be able to palm mute more than just power chords.
Dead Note / Left Handed Muting
Looking at the simple lick below, the symbols show you, just like before, where muted and unmuted strokes are played. Listen to the audio and get a sense for the rhythm that this creates.
You'll want to try the above lick, or similar, using alternate picking (separate lesson!), because as you speed up it'll be the most efficient way to play it (as will most lead phrases).
So there's a beginner's guide to palm mute guitar! I hope you've learned a new technique that will stay with you throughout your guitar playing life. There are more advanced palm muting lessons back in the main section, or see the links below.
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