What is the best way to do a percussive stroke like David does in the Intro and Verse to "It's too late"? Is this a palm muting with a chop across all the strings or a string muting thing by releasing pressure on the fretting hand?
Additionally, I have a question about palm muting technique. I generally have a hard time doing this on my acoustic. What is a good way to learn this technique and how exactly does it work on the acoustic?
Thanks
Hey there.
About palm muting :
It works exactly the same on any kind of guitar. Just put your palm on the strings, very, very close to the bridge, muting them. It feels a bit weird at first but once you get the hang of it, it's quite easy.
I rarely -- if ever -- use my whole or flattened palm, but instead use just the fleshy edge of my hand between the wrist and little finger. A chop strum using this becomes almost an oblique karate chop toward the bridge, but with fingers curled to hold the pick or directly strike the strings if sans-pick. To enable the mute at the end of a strum, I will use and exaggerated strum from the wrist smoothly ending with the edge of my hand against the strings near the bridge. The closer to the bridge one mutes, the longer the string decay time (less muted).
If one is using a really wide strum, even the inside of wrist can be used for the mute.
When picking muted notes, I rest that same edge of my hand almost right on the bridge saddle(s). This again requires a lot of picking wrist motion to move string-to-string. The muting effect is easily varied by rolling the edge of the hand toward or away from the bridge.
All of this takes a bit of practice. But once one has it down, it elicits some very interesting percussive tones -- acoustically or electrically both clean and dirty.
-Greg
-=tension & release=-
Thanks for the advice gnease ... I tried your technique last night and I'm on the way!
By the way, do you use the oblique karate chop thing with upstrokes as well or do you use a different technique? Do you ever do plam muted upstrokes?
Thanks
