Guitar Jams!  Pastor Brad's Christian Metal World! Palm Muting By: Ryan Spencer Back to Free Lessons      Guitar Jams Home      PB's Metal Music      Reviews I found this lesson on the web.  It was written by Ryan Spence.  I couldn't improve on it... so enjoy! Today we will talk about a crucial technique used in metal and many other genres (such as rapcore, rock, etc.) Palm muting is simply resting your palm (gently, meaning light pressure but with decent force) upon the bridge part of the strings, add in some distortion and voila! instant chunkiness. You see, in metal palm muting adds the great effect of dampening the notes (making them almost sound lower without ruining the pitch, also making them sound "flat" for other tastes) and cutting the sustain down. Now, since your palm is resting near the higher pitch tone of the strings it's a good idea to have your pickup selected to the bridge pickup. This will pick up the area around your palm rather than the flabby strings in the neck position, though I'm not saying  not to experiement with pick-up settings, that’s how you get more sounds! As a tip though, do not move your hand too forward or you will lose the clear note and come to a dead sounding string. The trick is to try to keep your palm directly on the area where the strings go into the bridge. Palm muting also, aside from chunkiness, adds a nice percussive sound to metal, rock, and believe it or not, blues. Blues used palm muting and still does (yes it does work with a clean channel on your amp or on your acoustic.) They use palm muting to get a bassier sound. Let's say we palm mute a classic blues riff. PM = palm mute each note... E ------------------------------------- B ------------------------------------- G ------------------------------------- D  --2-2--4-4--2-2--4-4----------- A ---0-0--0-0--0-0--0-0----------- E -------------------------------------- STRUMMING Strumming is an important factor. In most palm muting you want to strum down because you're usually strumming only a couple of strings in the power chord.   Later on you will find occasions to strum muted power chords up and down... but that will come with time. NOW... GO JAM ON! Ryan Spencer - October 18, 2001