Hello hive mind.
I'm slowly, oh so very slowly, trying to learn to play and I've hit my first big hurdle.
I'm using the Trinity Rock and Pop books and I'm looking at Desire by U2. Now I'm not interested in playing the song 'properly' as such, no down tuning and I'm sure the 'trinity' version isn't exactly what is being played on the record but that's not the point. I want to play what I'm being asked to play by the book.
Now if I just play the chords (Dsus2, A, E, A, E) I can make a reasonable fist of it. I mean it's 3 easy chords that's not the problem.
The book however wants to include muted strums between the chords (Dsus2,muted,A,muted,E, muted, A, E, muted, muted) and I'm really not sure how to achieve that.
The chords themselves include open strings so just lifting my fingers slightly will not mute those open strings. It's not like a barre chord where I can release the bar slightly to mute all the strings.
If I try palm muting with the right hand then it throws my rhythm off totally as it's a reasonably fast strumming pattern.
So I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to do it and I don't want to spend ages trying to figure it out. I'd prefer to know how I'm supposed to do it and then spend ages trying to make that work.
Any ideas gratefully received.
Comments
PolarityMan said: Sorry I don't understand the question.
I'm ok right hand palm muting when 'chugging' or using power chords as I'm only striking a few strings but with the movement I'm using to play full chords I'm really struggling to use right hand palm muting across all the strings.
This is one for the "don't overthink it, just get the feel right" bucket, imo
EDIT; Bit like the part after the chorus of redemption song.
Playing it without any muted string strikes sounds fine and is probably the way I'd play it if it wasn't for the book.
I think I initially misunderstood a couple of things:
It's not muting to introduce silence between the chords. The purpose is more than likely there to introduce a percussive sort of element between the chords. Think something like the intro to 'smells like teen spirit'. I'm not sure I hear it on recordings but like I said I'm more interested in getting it 'right' for the book than playing a faithful representation of the actual song.
I over-complicated what is written in the book. On the stave it shows notes for the proper chord followed by the same chord but with the X where the notes are. It occurs to me that if the purpose is to provide a percussive element then it can't be that important exactly which muted strings are played. So instead of worrying over exactly what to mute the purpose is served by simply playing a few muted strings.
Given this I'm finding that the best approach is left hand muting of strings between the chords keeping the right hand moving but only actually striking a few of the muted higher strings in passing rather than trying to be too precise with it.
Still can't execute it properly yet but it seems like the most logical approach.
I mean I get it, everything in these books is altered in some way. Usually to make it easier to play without detracting too much from the base song. I usually don't notice as I'm only passingly familiar with most of them. It really grated on an AC/DC track though. As a bit of a disciple I got very hung up with a couple of bars in the intro in it not sounding 'right' despite it being what the book had in it.