Guitar Palm Muting and Strumming Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar Course

the palm of your hand is normally
associated with a mind-boggling lapse of
judgment but as a guitar player it's
actually one of our greatest tools and
we're going to demonstrate that with a
technique called palm muting that's
going to help with your strumming your
dynamics everything right so we're going
to start by using the palm of our hand
and really if we say palm muting but
it's really kind of the side of your
hand what you're going to do is you're
going to kind of judo chop like the
bridge of your guitar alright and now
when you lay your palm over that you're
kind of dampening the strings the tone
of your strings with your hand right so
for example just gonna play regular G
chord and that's sustained and as long
as I hold it with my left hand it's
gonna ring out now if I have my hand my
palm over the bridge here see it's a lot
it's dead its dampened but and it just
has like a short burst of a sustain and
you can actually manipulate that
depending on how hard you dig in to the
bridge with your palm and how far if you
go see it the farther up I go towards
the sound hole no tone as I bring it
back I'm starting to get tone right so I
want to make quick distinction between
muting and palm meeting because I
actually when I first saw it I thought
they were the same thing when I'm muting
something like if you're muting a chord
like just take this on bar chord right
usually what you're doing is you're
using your left hand to hold the strings
while your right hand hits the strings
whether using a PEC or your thumb or
whatever like a core uh sustain forward
into a mute
now a palm mute is just what we talked
about before were you dead in the
strings chemically to change and tone
and the reason it's helpful for besides
just as technique is it really helps
tighten up the stroke of your hand
there's a lot of inefficiencies when you
first start playing guitar and a lot of
them are from strumming that's why a lot
of people have a hard time really
mastering the strumming kind of business
and like for example when I'm going down
and up just on a regular G chord a lot
of people first start playing out like
this and if you look at the inefficiency
here every time I go down I'm way down
here and there's this much space there's
a lot of space between the high E string
where I ended it and then I have to go
back up right so in a perfect world you
want to be a really efficient guitar
player and you do that by shortening
your stroke if I don't have to strum all
the way down here pass the string set I
can come back a lot faster it's actually
doubling the amount of time but I have
to take to get back up to my root
position right
and that doesn't really sound great
you're not getting a good dynamic so
what you want to start doing is trying
to tighten up the stroke of your pick so
it's really just kind of like when you
go down stroke you're only going as far
as the strings you know exist right now
that can be easier said than done
and the reason the palm muting is really
good for that is because it kind of
locks and anchors your wrist to the body
of the guitar so if I'm going down I
literally can't go any farther past the
strings than this the extension of my of
my wrist doesn't let me do it a lot of
people tell you that strumming is all in
the wrist and that's not totally
inaccurate but it's actually kind of a
combination especially really intricate
strumming it's a combination of your
wrist and your thumb so for example when
I say the thumb how important that is to
strumming and palm muting it let's do
that thing where you put your palm judo
chop the bridge right there and we're
gonna try to rest your pick on the low
e-string right now if you try to just
use your wrist to come down like that
you'll notice there's a lot of
resistance now if you rest the pic there
and you just put some power into your
thumb and push it down you're gonna get
a very recreate able distance from where
your pick starts and where it ends up
and that's actually what we're going for
in muscle memory in control when you're
trying to do some intricate strumming
stuff right so if I push this hard it's
going to give me three strings if I push
a little bit harder it's gonna give me
four five six so eventually you'll be
able to just hit one string hit two
strings hit three strings four five six
because it's all a repeatable way in
which you're using your wrist in
combination with the joint of your thumb
see if you watch my thumb closely there
you can kind of see that I'm bending it
just a little bit so not a lot of wrist
movement going on here it's more coming
from the thumb right and palm muting is
something that helps with that another
great reason to get good at palm muting
is because it acts as a dynamic
especially if you're maybe like an
acoustic singer/songwriter you're doing
a lot of stuff solo and maybe you have a
song that has the same chords for the
verse and chorus there's not a lot of
dynamic in the composition of the song
you can use palm muting to add a dynamic
in the presentation of the song so for
example is to take a chord progression
like a emajor to this C major and then
down two frets like a D major type thing
right so if we're just played the same
thing sustained strumming that's the
only place that that's really going to
go is that kind of level of volume
so if there's a change you can actually
use this as a volume control so if you
start out with it muted and then once
you open it up it's going to sound a lot
more exciting so it's almost kind of
like a way to cheat dynamics a little
bit if you're a solo performer I think
that a really important part of being
really good at strumming is a
combination of palm muting and unmuting
and it adds a percussive nature to your
playing so we're going to take that same
C major chord now we're going to do a
little bit of a strumming pattern now if
you notice the dynamic here I'm starting
with the low part just really the root
note which is the third fret on the E
string and I'm hitting the root note
first and then I'm kind of getting a
little bit more of it on a Down stroke
right it doesn't always have to be I'm
kind of aiming for three strings but it
doesn't always have to be this the lower
part of the chord zone and then you'll
notice I kind of jumped off for a second
I sustained it for a little bit on that
upstroke so root down those up strokes 1
2 3 & 4 and I'm kind of getting a thing
where I'm jumping off to sustain that
because if I just kept it down that'd be
a really dead sound so root chord down
pop and all together it's going to give
you more of a percussive element to that
plane
so I'm kind of selectively choking the
notes that I want with the palm of my
hand
therefore I'm adding more of a you know
more of an exciting strumming pattern
and you don't always have to just use
this with chords
any kind of scale that you can do and
then actually probably the best way to
practice this is just taking a scale
like the major scale right here that's
sustained right now if I were to try to
mute every one of those eventually
you're going to get a really good feel
for how much you have to dig into a
string where your palm has to be to get
the sound that you're going for and then
how far the stroke is and just set up
for the next string down and you can go
down and up and all of a sudden you'll
find yourself being able to hit two
strings if you want three strings if you
want just one you're gonna be much
closer your pick is going to be much
closer or your thumb or however you're
choosing to play it to the strings when
you see it if you see some of the best
guitar players ever a lot of them unless
they're doing something that's very
showy like showmanship style where
they're all over the place you'll notice
at the right hand with their strumming
hand doesn't seem to be moving a lot
because they're really dialed in to the
minutiae of the strings right so I
really think the palm muting is a way to
stabilize your wrist and keep your pick
close to the strings therefore you're
making a more efficient strumming
pattern and you're going to have an
easier time even when you're not muting
when you're just playing like this
having your pick closer to the strings
and then knowing building the muscle
memory into your wrist and your thumb of
how far that stroke is is going to help
you mute it or unmute it whenever you're
strumming and playing