All Stop Mute

Muting your strings is useful for many reasons!

All you need is a simple movement :) 

In this lesson, you'll learn how to easily mute all your strings with your strumming hand. This can be useful stylistically - and is excellent for rock and reggae. It can also be helpful if you accidentally hit a wrong note somewhere!

How To Mute ALL Your Guitar Strings

To mute your string strings, use the outer part of your strumming hand -  the edge of your palm.

A slight twist of the wrist is all you need to mute all the strings in one go! It's a small but significant movement. 

Work on it slowly and try to feel out your anatomy and mechanics. See what works best for you. Also, this is an excellent time to pay attention to your hand placement over the strings. If your hand is at the right angle, this should be easy to do!

When To Mute Your String

Muting your strings is particularly useful if you're playing rock or with distortion. You'll need to know how to mute the strings quickly! 

It's also great when your practicing chord changes and accidentally hit the wrong strings. It's a good way to reset your strings back in place - so you can quickly move on!

As I said, this is great for when you make a mistake and need the wrong notes to stop ringing out! There's nothing worse than the wrong note going on for a full bar.

And, it's great when you play riffs! Again, if you hit the wrong note somewhere or might want a shorter note - use this technique to mute your strings! 

Muting In A Strumming Pattern

You'll find that this type of mute is pretty common in reggae and ska music, too. For this style of music, you don't mute after beat 1. You mute right after you strum the chord -  which makes your chords shorter and more staccato. We'll be exploring this more a little later - but no harm in exploring it on your own. Especially if this is the style of music you dig - try incorporating it in a strumming pattern and seeing how it sounds!

This technique is something you'll want to start working on! It's a good one to practice with your Perfect Fast Changes exercise. You'll be able to practice muting your strings and improving your chord changes at the same time.

Next lesson, let's check out how you can make your own chord book! :)