Palm Muting

Lesson Goals:

♦ Become familiar with right hand placement for palm muting
♦ Distinguish difference in sound between muted and un-muted
♦ Practice short exercise to get a feel for the technique

In order to prepare for our next song we need to discuss a right hand strumming technique known as palm muting.

Palm muting occurs by lightly resting the edge of the palm on your right hand on the guitar strings while simultaneously strumming.

When done properly and in tempo with the  song it produces a rhythmic percussive effect.

Look at the pictures on the right. Notice how the edge of the palm rests lightly on the strings between the bridge and the sound hole.

Try this for yourself by forming an E chord with your left hand like normal. Now rest the palm of your right hand on the strings and, keeping it in place, use the pick to strum the strings with a down strokes.

 

Exercise:

I am not a big fan of boring repetitive exercises but we included this one just to help you get the feel of palm muting.

This 6 measure exercise involves playing a muted E chord with down strokes for 2 measures - then playing 1 regular E chord followed by 3 muted strokes - and in the last two measures, 2 regular E chords followed by 2 muted strokes.

Play around with this and other combinations you can come up with including throwing in some up strokes as well!