Six Strings
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Course

Beginner · step 8 · Not started · Electric guitar only

Palm muting

Rest the edge of your picking hand on the strings near the bridge, and your power chords turn tight and punchy. Goal: a riff that switches between muted and open notes.

This lesson is for electric guitar: it doesn’t count in your acoustic course, but you can still read it.

Time
15 minutes
Before you start
Power chords
You’ll be able to
Play a palm-muted riff

The motion

The Palm muting page covers the technique in detail. Here’s what matters:

  1. Rest the edge of your picking hand on the strings, right where they come out of the bridge.
  2. Barely press down: your palm dampens the strings, it doesn’t stop them dead.
  3. Strum down, keeping your hand in place: the sound turns dull and short.
abc

Palm muting, side view

  1. The edge of your hand (pinky side) rests on the strings, right in front of the bridge, barely pressing.
  2. The bridge: too far toward the neck and the note dies; too close to the bridge and the effect disappears.
  3. The pick strums as usual, without your hand lifting off.

If the note disappears completely, your palm is too far toward the neck: slide it back toward the bridge.

Start on one string

Start on the open low E, eight steady downstrokes, hand resting on the strings. Then lift your palm for one strum and set it back down: you’ll hear the difference between a muted note and an open one.

   PM----  PM--
e|-----------------|
B|-----------------|
G|-----------------|
D|-----------------|
A|-----------------|
E|-0-0-0-3-0-0-x-5-|

The riff

Three muted E5s, an open G5 that rings, two muted E5s, an open A5. In the tab, PM and its dashes mark the muted notes, and stacked numbers are played together: they’re the two or three notes of the power chord.

   PM----  PM--
e|---------------|
B|---------------|
G|---------------|
D|-2-2-2-5-2-2-7-|
A|-2-2-2-5-2-2-7-|
E|-0-0-0-3-0-0-5-|

The secret is contrast: your palm lifts just for the open chords, then drops right back down. Work on it slowly, then speed up.

On electric guitar

With distortion, palm muting changes character: the muted notes become a tight, punchy “chug,” the sound of hard rock and metal. Set your amp to crunch or high gain, as in the lesson The amp, and compare the same riff with and without your hand resting on the strings. The more gain you have, the less you need to press: your hand barely touches the strings.

On acoustic guitar

On an acoustic guitar, palm muting gives a dull, round sound, used a lot in folk-rock to drive a verse forward. Press a little harder than on an electric: without distortion, you need to clearly hear the difference between the muted notes and the open ones.

Loop it

With this guided exercise, play the riff once per bar, switching power chords when the orange dot comes back around.

E5

You’ve got it when…