MUTING: WHEN SILENCE IS GOLDEN

As guitarists, we hear a lot about muting, but usually it’s to do with creating the classic ‘palm-muted chug’ sound that’s so prevalent in metal and rock, and which can add bounce and percussive vibrance to blues and funk as well. But there’s another kind of muting that has nothing to do with going ‘chugga-chugga-chugga’ – the kind that’s all about making sure the audience hears the note you intend to present to them, and no unwanted or extraneous noises.

I have two particular approaches to muting that I like to use, and they’re both borrowed from players who have inspired me over the years. The first partially based on an old lesson with Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt which I read a very long time ago, and then built upon with some of my own ideas and observations.

The other is inspired by solo artist and former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman, and his unorthodox approach to picking and muting. Seriously, have you ever watching Marty closely? Trust me when I say that dude has some techniques!

THE NUNO APPROACH

Nuno Bettencourt is one of the cleanest, funkiest and most precise players ever, and a big par t of what makes his notes pop so well and fit in the pocket so perfectly is that there’s nothing going on besides the very specific note he’s playing; no fret noise, no string noise, no accidental note hits. His muting technique is so perfect that it’s like a stone wall: nothing gets past it.

Here’s how to attempt my Bettencourt-inspired take on this kind of muting. First, Look at your picking hand. Say you’re playing an A note at the seventh fret of the D string – angle the fleshy part of your palm right below your thumb joint in such a way that the edge of it lays against the A and E strings above the D string, in a similar way to how you might palm-mute, but taking care not to mute the D string itself.

But what of the thinner strings below the one you’re playing? Well, for these strings, you can use the underside of your fretting finger by laying it against the remaining strings. Don’t push down so hard that you’ll sound some notes like in a barre chord; just hard enough to get that same percussive thunk when you strike those strings, or to simply stop any extra noise from sounding when you hit them accidentally.

Now, say you wanted to play a note on the A string instead: use the same “dampen the string with your picking hand” method to cover just the low E. Or, if you’re playing a note on the G or B string, that part of your hand will cover all of the strings above it. This way, you can play a completely clear, clean note on whatever string you choose.

There’s an added bonus to this method, in that you also have the option of hitting all of the strings above the one you want to play as well, thus triggering a super chunky note attack. If you’re playing, say, a B note on the ninth fret of the D string, you can also hit the muted E and A strings and add a satisfying thunk to the attack of the note.

THE MARTY APPROACH

If you’ve ever watched Marty Friedman play, you’d notice that he often uses an extremely unconventional picking style where his arm extends right down so that his wrist is below the strings and his thumb is basically parallel to the strings, instead of at a 45 degree angle like most players. I saw him in a clinic once where he explained this: it’s basically ‘ anti-muting.’

Friedman’s approach to muting is not actually muting at all. He picks like this specifically because it doesn’t mute any unwanted notes, and the reason for that is because he likes the unpredictable nature of those random squeals, squeaks and squawks happening underneath the notes he actually intends to play.

Friedman sees this as one way he likes to keep his playing from sounding too mechanical and perfect. It helps him to sound more edgy and ‘street’, even when playing with really complex harmonic and rhythmic concepts. As technical and exotic as Friedman’s playing gets at times, it never sounds cold or clinical; this is one of the reasons why.

The point here is that sometimes, the most musically appropriate thing to do is to mute very precisely and accurately, so that the audience hears nothing but the one note you’re focused on. And sometimes, the most musically appropriate thing to do is to loosen up to the point where all sorts of unpredictable elements are introduced. Whatever works for the song!