Is Palm Muting a Crutch?

[Jarick]

Anyone else feel like this might be a crutch they lean on?

Been trying to play along with some old King's X this morning and realize how much I try to throw palm muting into passages that shouldn't have it. Of course Ty Tabor is amazing as hell and such a fluid player, but those rhythms of his are so smooth and fluid and he's not palm muting every other note like I am!

Now I actually have to pick the part cleanly with the left hand AND control the dynamics of the right hand so they aren't all over the place.

I hear this a lot with other good players too, they can play with steady dynamics in open passages so well. Something I need to work on.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Try that same technique through an OG 5150 through a 4x12 cranked WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY up and you'll realize it's not a crutch but a blessing

 

[the-trooper]

Is using a pick a crutch? Fingerstyle the whole thing!

 

[JiveTurkey]

My post was dead serious! Palm mutes through the right loud halfstack is a religious experience \m/

 

[DrewJD82]

I think I know what you’re talkin’ about; you get so used to muting and keeping things clean that when you DON’T have to, you end up neutering what you’re playing?

I get around this by being a lazy guitar player that goes weeks between picking up my guitar. If I ever feel too polished, I just stop playing, wait 2 weeks and then approach it like I forgot how to do it.

 

[Jarick]

I think I know what you’re talkin’ about; you get so used to muting and keeping things clean that when you DON’T have to, you end up neutering what you’re playing?

I get around this by being a lazy guitar player that goes weeks between picking up my guitar. If I ever feel too polished, I just stop playing, wait 2 weeks and then approach it like I forgot how to do it.

I'm more thinking that, it's a lot easier to pick a part palm muted because it makes it sound cleaner and more even, but if you had to do the same thing without palm muting you would have to pick a lot cleaner and more evenly. Make sense?

 

[DrewJD82]

I'm more thinking that, it's a lot easier to pick a part palm muted because it makes it sound cleaner and more even, but if you had to do the same thing without palm muting you would have to pick a lot cleaner and more evenly. Make sense?

Yeah, I can get that.

I think this is where a lot of fretting hand muting can come into play; once your picking hand is lifting off the strings, if there’s nothing muting them at all you’ll get that ringing as your hand moves/brushes against the strings. My buddy likes to pick apart what I’m doing as I’m doing it so he understands it better and I end up learning more about my playing in that time, we just went over this exact stuff friday night.

I used to teach him to keep his picking hand anchored on the bridge because we were in a progmetal band at the time and for our music and his particular approach, his hand had no business off the bridge, it’d turn into a mess. But that was 20 years ago in a certain context. This weekend he was asking about muting and thought he had a Gotcha! when he saw my picking hand bouncing around a bit, “SEE! You lied! Your hand is off the bridge!”, but I just used it to point to my fretting hand where all the strings were muted except the one I was let ring out.

 

[PLX]

Anyone else feel like this might be a crutch they lean on?

Not so much a "crutch" as it can become a "habit".

Switch from a higher gain rig to a cleaner one, and you quickly realize the palm muting isn't needed or even desirable to the sound you're going for.

 

[James Freeman]

No

 

[Sascha Franck]

There's a school of thought when it comes to jazz playing, not allowing for any wrist (let alone palm) contact on the bridge. I never understood what that was good for, others than making things harder to pick and feeling quite a relief once going back to the regular schedule, so it might be an interesting twist while practising here and there.

Then there's another, again mainly jazzy, kind of picking, the "George Benson style" - as in forming a sort of reverse pick angle:

With that technique, palm muting is barely possible.

However, what I don't get from your starting post, Jarick: Are we talking about the muting of active strings here or just about tring to stop inactive strings from accidental ringing?

 

[joezlo]

Its not a crutch, its a phrasing technique.
At high volumes, its a must.
If you're Luther Perkins, you just invented Johnny Cash's sound because your amp was cranked and it kept feeding back without the palm mute & upon explaining that to Keef, he was flabbergasted.

 

[duzie]

I think it’s a skill that can become a crutch.

Something that I struggle with as said earlier in the thread is, playing clean especially with a high gain .
Every thing is amplified.
I get thumps , pops, squeaks and other unpleasant sounds .
Even lifting my fretting hand from the strings cleanly is problematic.
This may be where the rubber meets the road.

 

[Jarick]

To be clear, I'm not saying all palm muting is bad. I just find myself palm muting ALL the time, and I think that's messing up my dynamics and control to an extent.

When I played real drums, after a couple years I figured out how to do a rim shot which was awesome for cutting through Marshall stacks. I then started to play rim shots every single time I hit the snare drum, outside of ghost notes and rolls. Fun for volume, but a really bad crutch that hurt me from playing dynamically.

Song I'm playing is "Black Flag" by King's X, and I found myself palm muting the entire main riff outside of the loudest notes or ones that ring out. If you force yourself to not palm mute any of the notes, you have to consciously control the volume and position of the right hand more.

There's two things it kind of reminds me of:

J Mascis said in an interview he basically didn't know about palm muting until about 10 years ago so all his old classic riffs were open or he'd have to mute with his left hand. That's a really interesting approach.

Rivers Cuomo I think in the recent interview with Chris Shiflett said there were no palm mutes on the Blue Album, I think by design. Again, a really interesting creative limitation.

TL/DR - I think I palm mute way too much and it's been limiting my picking technique!

 

[HotRats]

Anyone else feel like this might be a crutch they lean on?

Been trying to play along with some old King's X this morning and realize how much I try to throw palm muting into passages that shouldn't have it. Of course Ty Tabor is amazing as hell and such a fluid player, but those rhythms of his are so smooth and fluid and he's not palm muting every other note like I am!

Now I actually have to pick the part cleanly with the left hand AND control the dynamics of the right hand so they aren't all over the place.

I hear this a lot with other good players too, they can play with steady dynamics in open passages so well. Something I need to work on.

Well, could be I guess.

Once I've played with a guitarist in bluesy/classic rock band that came from metal (we were both auditioning and being auditioned).

After the audition he told me that he only played extreme metal rhythm guitar in his life and he couldn't play properly the songs they asked us to play.

And I agree he was a disaster both in style and sound.

 

[Iron1]

Not as much as a PA system is for a singer. I mean, if you can't sing louder than a drum set, bass rig and two guitar stacks turn in your mic, amirite?

 

[la szum]

Fucking Hetfield gave us the gifts and also fucked us in the ass with the chronic muted chugs and scooped mids.

35 years later and guitarists are still trying to recover from that shit.

 

[la szum]

Well, could be I guess.

Once I've played with a guitarist in bluesy/classic rock band that came from metal (we were both auditioning and being auditioned).

After the audition he told me that he only played extreme metal rhythm guitar in his life and he couldn't play properly the songs they asked us to play.

And I agree he was a disaster both in style and sound.

Yup. My experience is "metal" guitarists are often the least diverse and most tonally challenged. Also, tuning. Hello?

 

[Jarick]

Fucking Hetfield gave us the gifts and also fucked us in the ass with the chronic muted chugs and scooped mids.

35 years later and guitarists are still trying to recover from that shit.

We're all still trying and failing to out-write the Beatles 60 years later

 

[la szum]

We're all still trying and failing to out-write the Beatles 60 years later

Haha! And by comparison the chugs are pretty durn easy! And satisfying.

 

[JiveTurkey]

We're all still trying and failing to out-write the Beatles 60 years later

Haha! And by comparison the chugs are pretty durn easy! And satisfying.

Multi-tiered boo, incoming