Muting

Deliberately silencing strings that are not meant to sound, using either hand, and the single biggest factor in whether an amplified guitar sounds clean.

The fretting hand damps strings it is not using and stops notes at their end; the picking hand rests on the lower strings and controls whether a chord rings or chokes. Under gain, any string left open will ring sympathetically and turn a riff into a blur, which is why noise is so often a muting problem rather than an equipment problem. The same control also produces wanted effects, such as palm muting and the percussive chunk of a rhythm part.

Example: a fast distorted riff played with the unused strings properly damped sounds tight, while the same riff with sloppy muting turns to noise between notes.

Muting

See also