How to Palm Mute a Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi, John Aguilar again. I play a lot of music on the piano and on the guitar and when I'm teaching rock to my students I often use what we often call a palm mute and the kids are always wondering. What is that? How do you do that? You?re numbing it? What are you doing there? Well this is a palm mute. We can play it. We'll use a G power chord for right now. There is a G power chord. First finger at the third fret of the low E string that makes a G right there. Our third finger or pinky. I'm going to use the third because I can at the fifth fret of the A string. I'm going to strum just those two strings. Watch how I strum them here. Just those two strings. All right? Now that's a pretty intense sound. If I want to sing a song that might be a little loud so I'm going to palm mute it. I'm going to use my palm right about there on the strings. And what this does is, it brings the volume down but it keeps the intensity. See if I do it too much it will kill it. But if I do it just enough, you get the palm mute. So here's the difference. Without the palm mute, it's a bit loud. If I'm trying to sing, I might overwhelm myself. But if I use the palm mute, then it?s easy to sing with a palm mute and my voice if it's any good. But without it, might be too loud, but I can always count on the palm mute to get me through the day and not be too loud. Cause bands always play too loud. That's why they should all learn to do a palm mute."