Palm Mute Bass Technique – Step By Step Walkthrough!
The palm mute bass technique has been popularized by a lot of great players over the last 40 years.
My linktree: https://bit.ly/basslinks
Many use it as a way of switching between regular fingerstyle and a muted set up so they can get the best of both worlds.
Whether you play fingerstyle or with a pick, here are four things you need to master to use palm muting.
1. Which Part Of The Palm To Use
Ideally, you should be aiming to use the outer edge of your palm. It works well because it’s quite fleshy and this creates an effective mute.
If you’re playing with your fingers this does force you to adopt a different hand position and a slightly modified technique which we’ll discuss a little later on.
However, if you’re palm muting with a pick then your technique it’s quite similar to normal. The grip of the pick is unchanged and you should still be aiming to rotate from your elbow.
2. Don’t Compromise Your Wrist Angle
The tricky thing about palm muting whether with a pick or fingers is trying to keep a relatively straight wrist.
I find it helps not to try and cover all the strings at once with your palm but rather just cover the strings you’re playing on. It’s quite similar to something like the floating thumb technique in that respect.
Doing this means your not locked into a fixed position, your less tense and you’ve got great mobility.
3. Experiment With Pressure And Surface Area
How much of a muted sound you want will depend on how much pressure you put through your palm onto the strings and also how much of your palm is in contact with the strings themselves.
The general rule of thumb is that the more of your palm that touches the strings and the more pressure you put through your palm, the more muted you will sound.
Just keep in mind that the more pressure and contact you have, the more tension you’ll feel when you play. This could restrict how quickly you could move but if that’s not a problem for you then don’t worry about it.
Deciding what you to do is only a question you can answer for yourself so don’t be afraid to follow your instincts and trust your ear.
You may even find it helpful to listen to your favourite players and use them to guide and develop your own intuition and taste.
4. Thumb And Finger Style
If you want to palm mute with fingerstyle then try adapting your regular fingerstyle technique to include your thumb.
Personally, I find it best to rely mostly on combinations of my thumb and index finger but it is also possible to use the middle and even index finger too.
If you’ve got any background in classical guitar or you’re used to playing chord melody style material then this may come naturally to you.
To develop this technique try any alternate picking exercise you know but alternate between thumb and index finger.
Playing a major scale in groups of 2 can be a great way to get started.
#Palm #Mute #Bass #Technique #Step #Step #Walkthrough
Originally posted by UCXhP5YgHEm7UYleg94RU1VA at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OItOsTyFJw
Thank you very much! The video is easy to understand! I will try on my bass! ^^
Very helpful..thanks..sub'd
I saw a clip of Dave Ellefson from Megadeth talking about his palm muting technic with a pick. I guess he never even tinkered on the bass much without one. Because he spoke of finger plucking bassists asking him how to palm mute if they don't use a pick and Dave said "I don't know"
I'm a lead guitarist who never even owned and barely played bass but always knew it could be done.
Thanks boss I needed this lesson
this helped a lot!
Thanks for the tutorial, palm muting makes a lot more sense now on the bass!
Good job! I'd love to figure out how to incorporate the index finger, but every time I try either no sound comes out, or it sounds too much like a slap-bass-style pop (probably because my hand leaves the strings.) Any tips on making sure your hand doesn't leave the strings when you pluck with the index finger?
This is an excellent explanation. Really great tutorial. Thank you for posting this. I’m surprised there aren’t more comments on this video. I especially appreciated the part about it not being necessary for your palm to cover all the strings all of the time but rather to float and mute only the strings you are playing on. I usually play a 5 string bass and that’s something that I struggled with when I tried to learn this technique in the past. I also really liked your demonstration of how to use the thumb and index finger together to pluck with speed using this technique. Again, excellent tutorial video, thank you for posting!