muting with distortion

do you palm mute or fret hand mute? i find doing both together works best.

there is no one "muting" sound, but many possibilities for combos of guitar/amp/EFX/mute type/mute finesse/strings played/attack/... you probably just need to practice your muting at playing levels to figure out what works best for the tune/passage. clean may be the answer, or there may be ten other ways/sounds that are better and could be changed up throughout the tune. have some fun with this -- SoF cold use it -- not exactly KoL's most interesting tune.

most definately distortion and muting requires practice. I use my right picking hand. sometimes it rides over the bridge, just barely touching .(or better+ controlling the amount of string vibration with pressure). it varies so much with each moment in what it play, how I want the sound to appear, etc. my hand is not anchored but floating. I can execute a full strum and mute the sound length. one can get that short chucka chucka metal thing with quick muting. with practice you will find the nuances of pressure that will give you varieties in tone.
you couild practice clean, but then how could you learn to manage and use all those different levels of distortion.

left hand muting works great with barre chords. just by easing the pressure (not really lifting off very much) you can damp the amount of string vibration without losing your chord shape.
both left and right hand muting yield different results.

expanding on dogbite's explanation ....

muting is not a static or fixed technique, but is every bit as dynamic as picking or strumming. because the movements are often more subtle than fretting or picking, it's easy to miss that. I consider every note, interval or chord I play to be a choreographed process of moving through component motions: going through fretting and releasing while also progressing through exciting (picking) and controlled damping. notes are rarely a pluck, ring-out and die away progression. subtle, changing pressures and positionings of both hands during the life of a note determine what it will be during beginning/middle/ending. as a player gains more and more control, it should be possible to play the "same note" many times over and make it sound different each time by controlling entirely with hands and fingers. various degrees, type and processes of muting are nearly always part of this.

that is what experienced players mean when we say tone starts with or is in the fingers. it's the reason a player sounds pretty much like him/herself on nearly any guitar.

thanks guys for all your input. i think for now i will have to play that part clean live, and then give the distorted muting some serious practice.

The difficulty though comes with the volume. At normal house practice volumes it is fine distorted the way i mute now, the problem only comes at very high volumes - and i rarerly get chance to "practice" at gigging volumes - as i and my neighbour have very young daughters. so i cant be sure when i do practice at home if my technique is improving or not -

its a bit of a catch 22 really.

anyway, thanks again.

It's only an idea, feel free to tell me if it wouldn't work - but is there any reason why you couldn't practise the palm muting at a reasonably high volume with headphones plugged into the amp? It's all about touch and sensitivity, after all - playing through the 'phones should give you a reasonable idea how it'd sound at gig volume?

Just a thought....that's two reasonably coherent ones I've had this week. Must cut down on the tea and increase the alcohol intake.....

:D :D :D

Vic

The difficulty though comes with the volume. At normal house practice volumes it is fine distorted the way i mute now, the problem only comes at very high volumes - and i rarerly get chance to "practice" at gigging volumes - as i and my neighbour have very young daughters. so i cant be sure when i do practice at home if my technique is improving or not -

its a bit of a catch 22 really.

anyway, thanks again.

yes, that is a sad typical truth. I never really learned how to surf that overdrive/feedback wave, because it was very rare my amp's volume knob went past 6 ( :( ). the best one can do is to have a vocabulary of muting techniques and continue to have a dialog with the guitar . a lot can be had at any volume with or without the drive pedal floored.
tone is in the fingers and faith is in the mind.
if it works at low volumes you'll know what to do when it's cranked.

thanks guys!! as always some useful replies.

Oh and Vic.. Headphones :D

They say the greatest ideas are the most simple and headphones are definately a great idea. I can only hang my head in shame that i didnt think of that myself!!

Be careful with the headphones. Exposing your ears to that kind of volume at very close range for any period of time (let alone the sustained time of practicing) is not good for your long-range plans of being able to hear at an older age. This isn't just me being old and cranky - it's about protecting something that you'll probably want to have when you get older.

If you're going to play loudly, put the headphones around your neck and not on your ears. You won't hear them perfectly (obviously) but you should still get what you want to get out of listening. Not ideal, but better to still have all of your hearing...

Peace

Pete Townsend of the Who said he damaged his hearing not from loud concerts, but from headphones and studios.
be careful with them....and earbuds.

Muting with distortion requires more "muting". Since the type of music I typically play has lots of distortion and muting, I've gotten very familiar with this. When I turn off the distortion, I have to remember to mute "less", meaning closer to the bridge and less pressure. It even depends on the guitar you're using. Try different things, but really I think what you need to remember is that muting with distortion requires your palm to be a bit further from the bridge and needs a little more pressure applied depending on what kind of muting sound you're looking for.

Al,

I assume your playing the distorted chords that you hear in the background over the picking that's going on. I'm not sure if that's really muted or the just lower the volume during the verses and then crank it up during the chorus sections.

Instead of trying to mute the veses want don't you try boosting the volume during the chorus.

cnev, thanks for the response, but it is not the chords i am muting. it is the picking riff that occurs half way through each verse which has a muted sound to it. the problem is previous to that i am playing the main riff loud with a lot of distortion, and my gear wont allow me to switch between levels of distortion in one go - so i either mute a very loud distortion while picking, or just switch to clean.

Al,

I think we play a bit different and I'll admit I haven't played it with the rest of the band because they aren't that interetsed.

But the picking never stops right from the intro. He picks it slightly different on the intro there's a little slide in there that he doesn't do during the verses etc.

Plus there are at least two maybe three different guitar parts on the record.

Not that it means anything but I could send you the tab for the way I learned it, yo can toss it if you don't like it, but I'll have to send as a PDF. Can you open a PDF file, if so I'll send it in the morning