Muting - I'm struggling, need help

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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.

 
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Comments

  • RolandRoland Frets: 8590
    Left hand muting. If you're playing D2, A and E with a first finger barre at the 5th fret then use the barring finger. If you're playing in the open position then you can mute strings 1 to 4 with your left hand. Strings 5 and 6 can be damped with a combination of left hand thumb and right hand palm, or simply not played.

    Does this help?
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  • Isn't this just the rhythm bluff? 
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  • Mark1960Mark1960 Frets: 326
    Right hand muting is a good skill to learn, as sometimes open string chords are required. I rest the heel / side of my hand on the bridge, and use that to control the amount of muting. A bit of reverb also helps with the tone of it. Keep trying what works for you, and good luck
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  • Paul7926Paul7926 Frets: 227
    Roland said:
    Left hand muting. If you're playing D2, A and E with a first finger barre at the 5th fret then use the barring finger. If you're playing in the open position then you can mute strings 1 to 4 with your left hand. Strings 5 and 6 can be damped with a combination of left hand thumb and right hand palm, or simply not played.

    Does this help?
    Sort of.  They are open chords so using the left hand (plus thumb) seems like a solution.

    PolarityMan said:
    Isn't this just the rhythm bluff? 
    Sorry I don't understand the question.  :(

    Mark1960 said:
    Right hand muting is a good skill to learn, as sometimes open string chords are required. I rest the heel / side of my hand on the bridge, and use that to control the amount of muting. A bit of reverb also helps with the tone of it. Keep trying what works for you, and good luck
    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.
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  • MilkMilk Frets: 84
    what i do is when palm muting to get the higher strings i gently slide right hand down whilst still maintaining pressure on the strings. no idea if it is the correct method but worth a try and see if it works for you
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  • Just watching the JustinGuitar easy player version ( I’m not going to be tricked into listening to actual U2). They are quite fast chord transitions which takes care of a bit of the muting and the rest is the right ( strumming) hand. I’m naturally muting the low E and A with my thumb hooked around for the D chord and releasing it just enough for the A and E chords. I think Justin is doing the same thing.
    If I play it with my picking hand held away from the strings it’s not too bad, just getting some overtones that might sound messy at high volume. But some light pick hand muting is tidying it up. 

    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • Paul7926 said:


    PolarityMan said:
    Isn't this just the rhythm bluff? 
    Sorry I don't understand the question.  :(


    The thing you do where you just keep your hand swinging like a metronome then allow the chord to must as you change fingers for the last strum. Kind of easier to demonstrate than explain but I've heard it referred to as that because ideally you would change chord in between the strums and be able to play the chord on every strum but lots of people use the bluff.
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  • Paul7926 said:


    PolarityMan said:
    Isn't this just the rhythm bluff? 
    Sorry I don't understand the question.  :(


    The thing you do where you just keep your hand swinging like a metronome then allow the chord to must as you change fingers for the last strum. Kind of easier to demonstrate than explain but I've heard it referred to as that because ideally you would change chord in between the strums and be able to play the chord on every strum but lots of people use the bluff.
    Based on watching Justin for two minutes this isn’t really a song you can play with your picking hand as a metronome, it’s not straight eighths or sixteenths ( etc). For example if I was playing a Nile Rodgers type rhythm it’d be strumming 16ths and doing the pattern of chords and mutes with the fretting hand. But Nile wouldn’t use open chords so that doesn’t entirely work here ( if I’ve understood what you mean, I’m not familiar with the term rhythm bluff).    
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • Edge does actually play it with a slightly-swung but regular up/downstroke pattern. At least in the clip below he's not actually  muting *anything* - just being content to let the open strings ring while he's between chords with his left hand. It's definitely not palm muted; if anything you'd want your "muted" upstrokes to be very lightly strummed compared with the main strums when you're actually playing the chords of the song.

    This is one for the "don't overthink it, just get the feel right" bucket, imo


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  • LastMantraLastMantra Frets: 3822
    edited November 2019
    Generally I use a mixture of left and right hand just using any fingers/palm that are free. Hard to explain, more a natural thing.


    EDIT; Bit like the part after the chorus of redemption song.
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  • Paul7926Paul7926 Frets: 227
    Thanks everyone for your opinions and research on this.  After some messing about (practising) I've come to the following conclusions.

    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.
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  • Yep you're right, X represents a fretting hand mute Im still convinced this is the rhythm bluff though, more so having watched the video.
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  • Paul7926Paul7926 Frets: 227
    edited November 2019
    Yep you're right, X represents a fretting hand mute Im still convinced this is the rhythm bluff though, more so having watched the video.
    I'm inclined to agree with you.  I don't think the original, at least on the vids I watched, actually has this muting going on.  I suspect the truth of the matter is that I'm at the part in the course that wants to introduce the technique so they have put it in there as an exercise rather than it being true to the song.  

    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. 
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  • RolandRoland Frets: 8590
    I don’t trust videos and internet transcriptions, except possibly Guthrie Govan’s. Joe Satriani was once asked to talk a student through a transcription of one of his songs. He said that it was so wrong that he couldn’t play it. Not just fret position and fingering choices. Even the bar lines were in the wrong place.
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