Palm Muting

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 than the flabby strings in the neck position, though I’m not saying to not mess around with tonality, 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 (all that is underlined)

E|----------------------|
B|----------------------|
G|----------------------|
D|-2-2--4-4--2-2--4-4---|
A|-0-0--0-0--0-0--0-0---|
E|----------------------|
PM____________________

But off of blues, let’s get to the real important stuff, HEAVY METAL!

Strumming

Strumming is an important factor. In most palm muting you want to strum down because you’re usually strumming only the three notes in the power chord. Sometimes, on some songs that is, you can strum up and down but will get to that later, another reason not to strum up and down is that one, it can change the pitch; and two, it can become harder to strum with. As an example for down strumming let’s try Black Sabbath’s Paranoid.

(Hint: every time you hit your foot down strum two notes, you can go slow if you want to. On E5 (the seventh fret power chord for beginners) is strummed 16 times and D5 (the 5th fret power chord) is strummed 8 times. I’ll supply you with the beat)

     1   2   3   4   1   2   3   4    1   2   3   4   1   2   3   4
E|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
B|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
G|-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9--7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7--12--7----9----|
D|-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9--7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7--12--7----9----|
A|-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7--5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5--10--5----7----|
E|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
PM_________________________________________________

While in other cases such Rammsteins song “du hast” there is a small little rhythm with the E5 (the open fret power chord) with an up and down rhythm. I’ll also point out when to strum up and down.

D = Strum Down
U = Strum up

   1   2   3   4   1   2   3   4   1   2   3   4
   D D D D D DU D  D D D D D DUD DUDU
E|-----------------------------------------------------------------|2x
B|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
G|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
D|-7-5-2-2-2-22-2--7-5-2-2-2-222-2222------------------------------|
A|-7-5-2-2-2-22-2--7-5-2-2-2-222-2222------------------------------|
E|-5-3-0-0-0-00-0--5-3-0-0-0-000-0000------------------------------|
     PM__________      ______________

Other Uses

There are also some other uses for palm muting such as single notes. I will go over an excerpt from a rapcore song by Rage against the machine called “bombtrack”.

E|------------------------------------------------------------------|
B|------------------------------------------------------------------|
G|-----------------------------0------------------------------------|
D|---2-0---0---------2-0---0-2------2-0---0---------2-0---0---------|
A|-------2---2-----------2--------------2---2-0---------2---2-------|
E|-0-----------3-2-0--------------0-------------3-0-----------3-2-0-|
PM___________________________________________________________________

Another is a fade out technique. Simply strum and bring down the edge of your hand causing the sustain to “fade out”. Remember to bring and push down on the strings slowly. The slower you push the slower you’ll fade. This works great at the end of a song. You can always come up with your own uses or tricks for palm muting as well.