Palm Mute Guitar in Heavy Metal
Palm muting for beginners

In this lesson I'll be going through some effective palm mute guitar techniques that will get you playing with expert timing and accuracy. First though, I'll just give a little intro for people not sure about what this... is.

What is palm mute guitar?

Palm muting is a guitar technique used in all forms of music, but by far most religiously in rock and heavy metal. It involves dampening the strings, not with your palm as the name suggests, but with the edge of your hand, and when coupled with high gain or distortion from your amp or effects pedal you get a thick, rhythmic punch when you strike the strings.

Here's how to execute palm mute guitar...

Positioning for palm mute guitar

Identify where the bridge is on your guitar. It will be around the place my hand is rested on the left.

You should first rest the meaty part of the edge of your picking hand between the bridge and the first pickup - you should be able to feel all 6 strings along the edge of your hand.

Now, holding the plectrum towards the pointed "nib" so it has solid support from your thumb, pivot your wrist so that your plectrum is touching the fat E string.

I say pivot, because your palm should stay fixed on that bridge area. It will be angled round slightly.

With your picking hand, you want to strike the strings firmly to get as much punch as possible. However, don't go crazy, or your string life will drop dramatically! You don't have to annihilate them, just a quick, sharp, percussive downstroke... like this:

Left Click to Play or Right Click to Save >

That's a simple 1 2 3 4 rhythm there and you can just play the bottom E string to start with just to find your rhythm. Of course, a metronome will help you build up your speed gradually.

Speeding up and finding your palm mute tone

Once you feel you're up to speed on the above, look at the exercise below which is a little faster.

With all the lessons on this page, click on the diagrams to hear an example...

Creating texture

There is a way to define the "texture" of your palm mute riffs - how far your "palm" is positioned away from the bridge of your guitar. The further towards the guitar neck you mute the strings, the sharper and more percussive the mute sounds...

Position "A" gets you a thicker sounding mute - Click to hear >

Position "B" gets you a sharp, percussive sounding mute - Click to hear >

I like a good thick sound with distortion on so my hand will rest almost on the bridge, but touching the strings just enough to create that punch effect!

Love metal? Try Phil Weatley's Tearing It Up course for a more comprehensive guide to playing heavy metal guitar.

Changing string position whilst palm muting

The exercise above should have helped you get that initial rhythm, but obviously if there's going to be any sort of melody in your music, you will need to change between different strings using this technique.

When changing to another string (e.g. changing from a powerchord on the E string to a powerchord on the A string), the secret is to keep your hand in the same position, muting the strings.

Your hand should be muting the first 4 strings at least without having to change position, but instead, it should pivot so only your pick will move to the next string.

Try this palm mute exercise...

Onwards and upwards!

Getting more inventive with palm mute guitar

As well as changing chord whilst palm muting, you also need to be able to stop and start the muting in a riff to create more rhythmic effect.

Listen to the clip below and try and pick out when the muted downstrokes are applied and lifted...

This technique requires you to raise your hand off the strings at the appropriate time and then place it back in the same spot to mute.

To make sure this is accurate, only lift your muting hand off slightly but enough so you aren't muting the strings anymore.

Also, you need to synchronize removing your muting hand with a downstroke, so you hit the strings and pull your hand away almost at exactly the same time.

Try the exercise below...

Palm muted stops

If you hit the strings whilst palm muting normally, the chord or string will still resonate for a while, so to cut this off and create a short, sharp rhythmic effect we need to manually stop the string from resonating.

The best way to do this is to bring your fretting hand into the action. You can use the fingers on this hand to simply lift off the fretboard but still touch the strings that were in the chord. As soon as you raise your fingers to just touch over the strings, they will be fully muted.

If, however, you are playing an open string (not fretted) you will need to bring down some extra fingers to touch the strings and stop them.

You can hear an example of this right here!

Now let's put this technique to use with a stop-start riff...

Using palm mute guitar as percussion

As this is a very rhythmic style of playing, you can take this to another level and use your palm muting to act like momentum keeper and make your riffing more kinetic.

This involves you simply palm muting the bottom E string in between chords or notes. It should fill a gap so short in the riff that it merely becomes a percussive aid...

Click here for a slow example

So again, we're using that lift off, mute on technique from the exercise before.

If you speed that up you get a better picture of how it works (click tab to hear)...

Start with slow speeds with a metronome and build up gradually.

Palm muting on single strings

Although this will be covered in more depth in the lead guitar section, it's important to be able to palm mute more than just power chords.

Looking at the lick below, the symbols show you just like before where muted and non-muted strings are played. Listen to the audio and get a sense for the rhythm that this creates.

Start off slow, speed up gradually using that metronome...

So there's a beginner's guide to palm mute guitar! I hope you've learned a new technique that will stay with you throughout your guitar playing life.

For a more comprehensive guide to learning heavy metal guitar, I highly recommend the Tearing It Up Course.