Confession #28 - Palm Muting (Part 2)

In Confession #20 - Palm Muting! (Part 1) we learned about palm muting and how it can be used to get a chunkier sound and to create rhythm patterns by selectively muting certain beats in a measure.

In this confession, we'll learn about another cool application for palm muting, percussive slaps.

Percussive Slaps 

If you strum a chord and mute the strings with your palm of your strumming hand at the same time, you get a percussive sound from the guitar that has very little tonal content.  The resulting sound is different from the percussive sound produced when using fret hand muting (see Confession #25 - Fret Hand Muting!).

This technique is very useful when you are strumming your acoustic and singing a song.  You can use palm muting on beats 2 and 4 to simulate the percussive accent that a snare drum provides when playing with a drummer.

It takes a little bit of practice to get this right.  Strum the chords normally, but when you get to beat 2 and 4 rotate your hand outward a bit so that your palm comes down on the strings near the bridge at the same time that you strum them.

Strumming a "1 and 2  3 and 4" pattern like the first part of the video below should come without too much difficulty.

The challenge comes when you switch to a "1 and 2 and 3 and 4" strumming pattern like the second part of the video.  Because you have to change your hand position to apply the palm muting on beats 2 and 4, its a bit tricky to get a proper upstroke on the "and of beat 2" immediately after applying the palm mute.  Like all things with the guitar, it will come with practice.

In the third part of the video, I play through the G-Em-C-D7 chord progression from Confession #5 - Use a Metronome!  and Confession #7 - Use Pivot Chords! using a "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" strumming pattern, and apply this technique.

(Sorry for the crappy video. WinXP patch KB 2834904 was released by Microsoft on July 10th and has spawned numerous complaints.  Among those complaints is the top half of videos being black, which is exactly what happens when I create the movie in Windows Movie Maker.  Once Microsoft fixes this problem I'll redo the movie.)

Next Week's Confession - Finger 3-4 Independence! (Ex. #3)

Confession #20 - Palm Muting! (Part 1)

Palm muting is a right-hand technique (i.e. your strumming hand) that allows you to dampen the strings a bit so that they don't ring on so much, and it also provides a chunkier sound.

PALM MUTING

As its name suggests, to palm mute, you use the palm of your right hand to mute or dampen the guitar's strings.  You're not actually using your whole palm to do this.  Really its just the edge of your palm below your pinky finger.

Rest the edge of your palm across all six strings at the bridge of your guitar.  The closer to the bridge your hand is, the less damping your palm will provide.  The further from the bridge your hand is, the more damping your palm will provide and the chunkier it will sound.  Apply some overdrive for full effect!

Try applying palm muting to this simple Chuck Berry rhythm.  In the TAB, palm muting is applied in the second measure only.  Try experimenting with and without applying palm muting.  Also try moving your palm closer to and further from the bridge.

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CREATING RHYTHM PATTERNS

Using palm muting allows us to expand our ability to create interesting rhythm patterns.  Instead of palm muting for an entire measure, experiment with palm muting some but not all of the beats within a measure.

Here is a example of a common application of this technique:

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This palm muting pattern produces a sound like this:

                                        Ba - Da - Da - Ba - Da - Da - Ba -Da

You'll hear a variation of this common pattern in Bryan Adam's 'Summer of 69'.


You'll also hear this rhythm pattern at the very beginning of Chuck Berry's 'Johhny B. Goode', where Chuck is using slides (not palm muting) to get the 'Ba - Da - Da' effect.

Next Week's Confession - Back to the Major Scale!