Stop 2 of 6
Palm muting and noise control
Muting with the palm, silencing strings and sounding tight.
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Stop 2 of 6
Muting with the palm, silencing strings and sounding tight.
You've got power chords. Now you'll learn to tame them. The difference between a beginner and a player who "sounds like the record" is rarely in the notes: it's in what doesn't ring. At this stop you learn the , the tight, percussive sound that drives rock, and how to silence every string you don't want to hear with both hands.
Listen to the open 6th string in eighth notes, first ringing freely and then palm-muted. In the tab, the second bar carries the P.M. mark above every note:
In the first bar the notes run into each other and form a continuous drone. In the second, every note is a short hit, with body but no tail: "chug, chug, chug". Same fret, same string, same pick. Only the position of your hand changes.
Palm muting uses the edge of the picking hand: the fleshy side by the pinky, the part you'd use for a karate chop. That edge rests lightly on the strings, just in front of the saddle, the part of the bridge where the strings stop vibrating.
Three positions, three sounds:
Find your spot like this: play eighth notes on the 6th string and slide your hand very slowly from the bridge towards the neck. You'll hear the sound go from open to tight to dead. Stop right where the chunk appears but the note is still there.
In printed tab you'll see P.M. above the notes, often with a dashed line showing how long it lasts: P.M. - - - - -|. When the line ends, you lift your hand slightly and the notes ring open again. In this journey, the player marks each muted note with P.M. above it.
The most common move is to alternate: muted notes for the pulse and open notes for the accent. The contrast is what makes the accent hit.
To go from muted to open you don't need to move your arm: just lift the edge of your hand a couple of millimetres or shift it towards the bridge. Practise that tiny gesture silently, without playing, until it's automatic.
A palm mute isn't an on-off switch: it's a dial. With your hand slightly closer to the bridge, you hear more of the note and the chunk is soft; slightly further towards the neck, the chunk gets drier and the note almost disappears. Guitarists change the amount of palm muting within a single song: light in the verse to leave room for the voice, heavier in a tense passage, none in the chorus so everything opens up. Try playing the same bar three times, from less to more muted, without changing how hard you pick: you'll notice the apparent volume changes even though your picking doesn't.
The is what you just played: low, muted eighth notes, usually downstrokes, working like an engine under the chords. On top of that engine, open power chords pop out as accents.
A downstroke falls with the weight of the hand and sounds a little louder and "fatter" on the low strings. That's why many rock and metal players chug with all downstrokes, even at fast tempos: Metallica's James Hetfield is famous for it. At very high tempos most players alternate down-up to save energy. Both are correct; start with all downstrokes and leave alternate picking for later in the journey.
Palm muting deadens the low strings when you want a tight sound. But there's another job, invisible and constant: making sure the strings you don't play never ring. Both hands do it at once.
Fretting hand
Picking hand
If you rest your fretting fingers on the strings without pressing them down and pick, you get a : a hit with no pitch, a "chk". In tab it's written as an x. It fills in the rhythm without adding notes:
When strumming, that same hit is called a chuck. Hear it in this pattern: the ✕ is a muted stroke with the fretting hand relaxed on the strings.
When something rings without permission, run through this list before blaming the guitar:
| Noise | Usual cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| High strings humming | Finger 1 isn't touching them | Flatten finger 1 slightly |
| 6th string booming in 5th-string shapes | Nothing is muting it | Tip of finger 1 or edge of the hand on it |
| Squeak when changing frets | Fingers dragging while pressing | Release before you slide |
| A note still ringing after a chord | You're not cutting the sound | Release the pressure or rest the palm |
Goal: Alternate one muted bar and one open bar eight times without losing the pulse and without the palm mute going sharp.
An original riff in E. All downstrokes. The chords at the end of each bar ring open.
Once it's solid, play it over this backing:
Goal: Play the riff four times in a row at 100 BPM, with every P.M. note equally tight and the accents clearly louder.
Hold a two-note power chord shape and strum all six strings on purpose. If both hands are muting well, you'll hear only the two chord notes and muted thuds on the rest. It's the best control test: pass it and nothing extra will ring when you play with distortion.
Goal: Strum all six strings over G5, C5 and D5 so that only the chord's notes sound.
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