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Palm Muting
If you don’t want to listen to me meander around for a paragrapth’s, start the lesson on the 4th paragraph.
When the internet was a baby and things like on line guitar lessons were given birth I started to learn how to palm mute. Trying to learn to play acoustic blues featured a lot of muted bass lines. i remember the first time I actually made a clean muted 3rd fret bass E string sound and then how quickly I found that soo soo hard to repeat that tone regularly. Some of the older acoustic blues artist’s were making a dead string bass mute(lightin Hopkins) as part of most of their songs. Other artists were muting whole bass lines with ease. With a lot of cuss works, sweat and finger fatigue I finally figured out how to bass mute whenever i wanted to use that technique.
If you enjoy listening to any of the mountain blues(R.L. Burnside and friends) you hear a lot of pinky finger style strings mute. I learned how to do that from Tony’s lessons. I also developed the slight finger lift but still touching of 3 strings adjacent to each other chord mutes that i use a lot.
To learn to mute I would suggest the Bass string palm mute as the easiest palm mute to work on. It takes a bunch of practice, unless you are gifted( I’m not) to learn how to lightly touch the bass string you wish to mute very close to or slightly on top of the bridge saddle. The harder you press down the less note tone you will generate. For me a hard pressed mute tone is just a dead thump tone that is used by some blues artist. It can create a hypnotic drone tone that can be fun.
Just start with the open E bass string and once you can achieve slight mute on that position move to the 3 fret of the Bass (E G note).
Then learn the open A string the 2nd fret B string. Then the open D string and the 2nd fret E note. That covers the key of Blues Bass E chord. if you do it on the quarter note beat it is very useful. The other 2 main chords in the key of E, A and B chords follow the same patterns of the root not, flatted 3rd and the 5th notes of the chord. Open A string, 3rd fret of the A string and 2ne fret of the D string.
For the B chord bass line it would be A/2, open D string and D/4.
Key of C – You already know how to mute the 3rd and 5th notes of the C chord made up of the notes C, E and G .Learn to mute the A string 3rd fret C note .
The F chord starts with the 1st fret of the bass E string(F Note) and you already the know other 2 notes of the F chord, A and C. And the G chord is 3rd fret bass E string,2nd fret of the A string for the B note and you know how to pick the open D string note.
If you learn how to do this you are, now, a blues guitar picker. We can work on the other forms of muting after you get this down. Have Patience and Good luck with learning to mute.
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3 Replies
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The other thing, I was trying to learn how to finger pick(still trying…).
So I used the thumb as my picking finger, no pick back then. That creates a different tone than pick muting does. Try to learn both ways of palm muting.
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@jorgemac are you suggesting that one should learn how to mute each string separately? I’m a little confused by this essay in juxtaposition to Tony just saying to lay your palm near the bridge and mute all the strings.
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Hey Pete, That is how I learned. single string bass blues notes run. That is the reason that i had a learning moment with last weeks lessons. I was not used to sliding the palm down the the strings so that my palm arrived on the treble E string for an partially muted upstroke.. and rest and then the Fretted B and G strings. worked on it over the week end and again, before TAC practice this morning and it is much smoother now. So I feel comfortable palm muting all 6 strings one note at a time or in chord shapes.
My muting background began when learning( still learning) finger picking on acoustic blues tunes and partially muting the bass notes and runs. But that was usually only one the bass E, A, and D strings. Never needed to partially mute the treble E string before. For My palm mute on that bottom treble string i learned that by lightly resting my palm near the wrist/arm break area above the saddle/bridge area of the treble g string I was able to mute the E, B, and G strings with a partial mute. Of, course every one has different sized hands so this might not work for everyone.
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