Hi, I’m trying to do a chromatic exercise from the technique series, but am having trouble with the palm muting. It’s easy to get the other strings muted if I’m playing an e string, but if I play one of the strings in the middle (like A string), I can only really mute one side. Any suggestions for how to mute the strings on both sides when playing on the A string?
hi saketh, have you tried muting with your left hand? if not, that's something worth practicing :) muting at the bridge isn't the only way to mute the strings you don't want to play. hope that helps.
Thanks for the note, Tim! That makes a lot of sense. I found this video a little while ago (
), and it seems to line up with what you're saying. Been practicing muting with my left hand in a couple different ways. Thanks!Here is Tomo's comment:
"Thanks so much for subscribing to my Guitar Wisdom. Palm muting is difficult to master. You can practice it by playing chromatic scales on the 4th and 3rd strings, to the 12th fret. Play them with a little louder amp setting, more treble and less bass. And no reverb -- this will help a lot. Play slowly -- half notes at 60 BPM, accenting every beat. Then try playing a chromatic scale with vertical movement. Start at the 5th fret and play slowly from the 6th string to the 1st string. Then play down the chromatic scale, back to where you started.
"It is not possible to do all muting with your palm. You will need to combine palm muting and left-hand muting. This is covered in many of the sight-reading lessons (based on Bill Leavitt's book) on Guitar Wisdom. Working with Bill Leavitt's book really helped me to improve my muting technique."
Marcus Hembree
Got it, thank you for sharing the exercise! It reminds me of a lot of the exercises I did to get good tone out of the clarinet when I used to play. I’ll give it a shot!