String Muting - Any tips?

[GREENMACHINE]

Hey guys,
Iv been practicing my improvised soloing for ages now but a fair amount of the time I get abit of string noise from unwanted strings e.g bumping the string above when I bend...My accuracy obviously needs some more work lol.

Does anyone have any tips on how to mute the strings I don't want to play? Iv noticed alot of guitar players use their strumming hand almost sitting on the strings by the bridge, is this to mute the other strings they're not playing?

Cheers,
Cav

[deeaa]

I used to mute with the right hand, I suppose that's a very common method...I think I may still do it in certain type playing, especially when doing really fast/metal rhythm picking.
BUT of late I've noticed I do pretty much all my muting with the left hand, it pretty much always rests on the strings and governs which strings sound or not.

Meaning, even when I'm soloing, I tend to have the hand almost like doing a chord, and muting the unnecessary strings just like when chording. Also makes it much easier to transfer from, say, a bend to the next note because the hand is already doing the chord it works over.

It's not necessarily THE chord the song is in, but nevertheless it seems, when I really try to analyze how I play (I normally never look at what I do really, I don't look at my hand or fretboard much), it seems the hand rather automatically creeps onto or looks for chord forms for the note and/or the next one, while one or two fingers are playing a note, if that makes any sense.

[groverj3]

I tend to do something similar to what deeaa said. I tend to do a combination of muting with my palm and with fingers I'm not using for soloing, especially when bending. When bending I usually use my index finger to mute strings by almost barring them without putting enough pressure down to actually push down the string. Am I making sense?

However, when playing rhythm I almost exclusively use my palm to mute. The aforementioned fret hand muting I use for slower soloing when string noise will be more noticeable. I guess the answer I'm getting at is that I use both.

[Tig]

I don't recommend the Steve Vai tongue harmonics method...
http://www.google.com/url?source=imgres&ct=img&q=http://www.concertshots.com/images/cs-SteveVai1-Atlanta71901.JPG&sa=X&ei=l6aOTee2PIecgQeUkdGiDQ&ved=0CAQQ8wc&usg=AFQjCNGdymVFOsIgHh1niEcQdHp0bODqOQ

[mrmudcat]

D pretty much has this one whipped ......another suggestion is wrapping the thumb of left hand or non picking hand over the top of fretboard to mute those strings when soloing.........left hand or non pick hand muting using fingers before your slide finger or soloing fingers before or after picking the note is also a good habit atleast for me and mine,,,,not sure if this makes any sense :socool

[Monkus]

For me, its a combination of both right and left hand technique. I don't know how it happened, but my ears dictate what sounds. The first time i realized this I was learning "Shine" by Collective soul. The intro and verse rhythm part used to be rife with unwanted string noise, then by practising it it became cleaner and cleaner. Play with it, try different things. A study of Frusciante might help. The above tips are really good ones too.

[GREENMACHINE]

Thanks for all the suggestions and tips guys. I will try them out and see what works....I'll definitely work on my left hand muting and then try get my right hand to get better at muting too.

Thanks again,
Cav

[Tig]

A tip for right hand muting... The closer you place your palm to the bridge, the better it works/controls/sounds. Experiment for what works best.

[omegadot]

I normally rely a lot on left hand muting unless I'm doing something fairly repetitive in which case I use right hand.


If I'm going between adjacent strings I find that I tend to use the tips of my thumb and index finger on the picking hand as I pick the next string. I'm not sure if that is a good habit to get into.