Palm Muting

Palm Muting is a technique where you rest part of your picking hand palm on top of the strings near the bridge saddles while picking those strings. The effect is that the string's high frequency energy is quickly absorbed by your palm, so you can only hear it during the attack portion of the note, while the lower frequencies continue to resonate. This technique is absolutely essential for most hard rock and metal styles - when used with distortion it provides a signature "djent" sound. It's overall effect is a more percussive sound.

Technique In-Depth

Honestly, this technique is very simple to describe, but it takes years to absolutely master. The part of the palm you use, its location on the strings, and how hard you press the palm against the strings all affect the tone of the mute you will get. Let's start with some don't's:

• Don't mute too far away from the bridge. The further you place your palm from the bridge, the more it is not simply muting high frequencies but all frequencies.
• Don't push down on the strings too hard with your palm. If you have a floating bridge, you're going to push the strings out-of-tune. Even without it, you don't gain anything you won't get by sliding your palm a little further away from the bridge.
• Don't try to mute with the middle of your palm. How will you pick the strings?!? Use either the part of the palm where it connects to the wrist, or the edge of the palm almost on the side of your hand by the pinky.
• Don't use a different picking stroke when muting. Your normal stroke should work - you are just resting your palm on the strings while making normal picking strokes. You should be able to make down strokes and up strokes without any more or less effort than normal.
• Don't slam your palm into the strings right before playing palm muted notes. You will hear the noise associated with doing so. Your right hand should already be close to the strings - simply move it closer so it touches the strings.

Palm Muting and Muting

Palm muted notes may sound pretty extreme, but they actually carry less energy than unmuted notes. That means noise or ringing open strings can be more easily heard when playing palm mutes. Given that palm muting is associated with heavy distortion, it's especially important to mute the unplayed strings. You'll need to use your left-hand to do so. Drape your fingers over the unplayed strings, using just enough pressure to mute them (but don't press them into the frets!), preferably with more than 1 finger to avoid accidentally sounding harmonics.

If the piece you are playing calls for rests (silence) between palm muted notes, you should again use your left hand to perform the mute. Keeping the right hand in palm mute position will help. But to get a proper mute with the right hand, we'd prefer to have it mute the strings a bit further off the bridge. Doing this in between palm mutes is a lot of movement, which in itself is difficult. But given that you'd be sliding your hand back and forth while touching the strings, it's actually counter-productive. Sliding against the strings (even when muted) will create noise. So you'll have to use your left-hand. This doesn't mean simply unfretting the notes you are fretting but getting 2-3 fingers draped on the strings.

d--2--(x)--2--
a--2--(x)--2--
e--0--(x)--0--
   p       p

Look at the example above. You'll likely fret the 2nd fret on both the A and D strings with your index finger. For that mute between the power chords, I like to not only unfret my index finger (while leaving it in contact with the strings to mute them), but use my middle, ring, and pinky fingers to make sure all 3 strings are fully muted.

When adding more left-hand fingers to mute, make sure you don't slap the strings too hard - that will create a noise of its own. You want to lightly touch them onto the string. It's the multiple points of contact that really help mute the strings and absorb their resonant energy.