Basic Technique Questions

when making barre chords the thumb should be behind the neck.
it should be pointing towards the headstock.
it should be in the middle of the neck.

when forming open chordsI through my thumb over the top of the neck.

practice slowly first.

if you sound a string unintentionally while lifting your finger then you are dragging and not lifting the finger.
a guitar technique called a pull off is more what you are doing.

damping with the heel of your picking hand is a technique. a good one.

but you need to be more careful if your intentional notes are muted.
just ease off a bit. that's all.

when forming open chordsI through my thumb over the top of the neck.

I think you will find that for most people the thumb moves positon depending on which open chord you are forming. Personally my thumb is over the neck for the D chord only (and not always at that). It is in a different postion for each chord. It should be comfortable and in a good position to allow your fingers to easily form the chord. Try to keep some space between your hand and the back of the neck. It can be difficult to change chords easily if there is no space there.

I totally agree with Max: as far as thumb position goes, there are as many great players out there as there are thumb positionings. Clapton, Paige, Satriani, etc... if you watch them, they all do something a little different.
As for the scales though, here's something you can try:
Instead of palm-muting all of the notes, like you were talking about, try muting only the strings that you have already played. So if you're playing an A-major scale in 5th position for example, you would play 5-7 on the low E string, but then when you move up to the 4th fret on the A string, mute the E string. Then you'll play 4-5-7 on the A string, and as you go to the D string, you move you palm up one string (not hard to do since the whole hand has to move any way to pick the notes on the next string) to mute the A string. If you continue like this, always keeping the string that you just played on muted, then they can't make any noise :D ! Then on the way back down the scale you can 'un-mute' them as you go. This is what I do when I play scales (and even riffs, to some extent, if it fits in with the fingering) and it seems to work. Hope this helps, and best of luck!

Yeah, thumb posistion really depends on what you need. Classical players and tradionalists will tend to tell you that the thumb should always be behind the neck, however you constantly see great guitar players like Clapton and Hendrix with the thumb over the top of the neck. The fact of the matter is that you will do both, depending on what you are playing, and how far you need to reach.

As for the sounding the strings when you take your finger off, you are probably dragging your finger off as you implied. This is an important skill, so don't forget how to do it, it's called Pulling Off, as stated earlier. Many players find this skill difficult, because they don't 'drag' their finger off, so while you may want to learn how to control it, don't forget how to do it.

Two of those problems, 2 & 3, tie in together. As the others have said, dragging the finger off the string is called a pull-off, and you'll want that later, but until then it's that that's causing the notes to run together. As you get the hang of removing a finger without dragging it, you'll find that as it comes off it mutes the string just enough to stop the note running on too long.

There's basically a very small time between the note being fretted and your finger being off the string where you are touching the string very lightly, which is the same as you're doing with the palm when you palm mute. (In fact, that little fret-finger mute is the reason we have to drag the string slightly to do a pull-off..)

Here's my favourite 'thumb placement' guide:

http://www.heartwoodguitar.com/WordPressBlog/?p=7

The rest of the site keeps me amused too. If you want to learn an easy'ish song that sounds good check out Green Days Good Riddance on here:
http://www.heartwoodguitar.com/WordPressBlog/?p=5

And if you haven't seen Helena Kleins clip (First Cust is the Deepest) take a look at that too.

I'm also in the process of looking for different ways to place my thumb. I never thought it was a problem till I started getting pain, I find my thumb needs to be more comfortable and relaxed. BTW I use that site too that rich linked too

The purpose of the left-hand thumb is to stop the guitar neck going backwards too far when you fret a note or a chord. Don't believe me? Play a few chords without your thumb on the neck - not only is it possible, but it's not as horribly difficult as you'd first imagine.

I agree that you're probably dragging the fingers off the strings rather than lifting them straight up. What I do with students is hold a pen (or my finger) between their hand and their guitar neck. this encourages them to think about how the fingers come down on the neck, and once they've spent a couple of minutes working with this I take my finger/ pen away and (hopefully) they carry on playing nice and clear.

One student's mum is desparately trying to get her head around her little darling's assignment for this week - "Do you know what you've got to do for next week?" "Yes mum, Think Space!!!" It's a marvellous concept.

Best,

A :-)

Thanks guys, some great help there - most appreciated :)

Alan, I'll be round next week for lessons ;) I like the sound of "Think Space" as a homework topic :)