Palm muting is a very popular and essential guitar technique that spans many styles including rock and metal.

Although this technique is frequently called palm "muting", I prefer palm "muffling" because muting implies the complete absence of sound.

The effect we're aiming for here is a "deadening" of the notes that still retains the tonality of those notes. This is yet another way to create dynamics in your playing.

No doubt you've heard this technique before but may not have thought about it too much. Here's how you do it:

Your rhythm hand position is crucial. The key is to rest the pinky side of your hand on the guitar bridge where the strings are riding.

Resting your hand too far forward will kill the tone of your notes so you don't want that.

Resting your hand too far back will allow the strings to ring out too much and the effect is diminished.

So what you need to do is just rest your hand on the bridge and pick your strings. Move your hand forward and backward to "home in" on the optimal spot.

Here's a quick exercise that I've put together for you. As you can see and hear, you can muffle chords as well as individual notes.

Play this until your muffling sounds similar to mine in the audio and be sure to remember exactly where your hand is resting.

Practice raising and lowering your hand to get a feel for the technique.

Need help reading tablature?

MUFFLING TECHNIQUE
The audio for this example is here.

m = muffle

      m  m  m     m  m  m     m  m  m
E --------------------------------------------------
B --------------------------------------------------
G --------------------------------------5--7--------
D -2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2---5--7--------
A -2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2---3--5--------
E -o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o---------------



      m  m  m
E --------------------------------------------------
B --------------------------------------------------
G --------------------------------------------------
D -------------2------------------------------------
A -2-----------2------------------------------------
E ----5--3--2--o------------------------------------


REPEAT

Another essential technique that you must posses as part of your control is the ability to mute your sound. Yes, this time I mean actually silencing your guitar completely.

This time your fingering hand gets the call.

Basically, all you do is gently lay your fingers on the strings on the neck and silence all sound. Obviously if you squeeze too tight, you're going to fret a note somewhere.

Since you're moving from "sound" to "no sound", the first stage of this technique is fretting a note or chord.

The second stage is lifting your fretting fingers away from the neck quickly, but not so much as to lose contact with the strings.

As soon as you lift away, lay the rest of your fingers on the strings so that there is no sound coming from the guitar.

Now, if you're ending a song or your silence is needed for a few bars in your music, The best thing to do is follow the steps above and then turn the volume knob on your guitar all the way down. That way you can relax if you want and don't have to worry about accidentally making a sound where it doesn't belong.

In the following example, I'm simply muting an A power chord in a manner that you might play during a song.

MUTING TECHNIQUE
The audio for this example is here.

m = mute

         m   m   m       m  volume down
E --------------------------------------------------
B --------------------------------------------------
G -2---2---2---2---2---2----------------------------
D -2---2---2---2---2---2----------------------------
A -o---o---o---o---o---o----------------------------
E --------------------------------------------------

Again, techniques like muffling and muting, create more dynamics in your playing, and ultimately your music.