
Beginner
Beginner
- Develop a better sense of muting with both hands.
- Understand to play within a rhythmic pocket.
- Learn what it takes to riff like James Hetfield.
Open-string notes are arguably the most magical sounding notes available on the guitar. However, there are times when those are precisely the notes we don’t want to hear. We might only want to hear the strings directly beneath our fingers. That’s where muting comes in. It’s equal parts sleight-of-hand magic and surgical precision, but mostly it’s just the result of a clever approach to technique.
What is Palm Muting?
The most common style of muting is palm muting, where you place the side of your palm against the string close to the bridge to achieve a more chunky, percussive sound. One of the absolute masters of palm muting is Metallica’s James Hetfield. In this video below, check out how tight he is with the muting.
The fretting hand has some muting responsibilities as well. It’s in charge of keeping things clean on the fretboard and allow the picking hand to make larger motions if necessary. That will be our focus here. I want to show you how to keep your strumming hand moving while preventing any unnecessary noises—or pollution.
The funkiest rhythm players—Prince, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Nile Rodgers, Al McKay, Jimmy Nolan, Cory Wong—know all about this. Jazzers like Wes Montgomery and George Benson use fretting-hand muting extensively in their brilliant octave work as well.
The basics of the technique amount to laying the portions of your fingers that you’re not using across the remaining strings in order to keep them quiet. Not silent. Just quieter. You’ll hear a percussive attack across the string in addition to the notes that are being played.
Ex. 1 is a deceptively tricky technique that looks and sounds way easier than it really is. Even when you’re playing single notes, all the strings are being strummed the entire time. Take a listen.
Ex. 2 consists of our utilitarian A minor blues (A–C–D–Eb–E–G) scale. While this will be played one note at a time, we’re strumming all the strings so that we hear the intended note as well as a strong percussive sound alongside it. This makes for a big tone and, by constantly strumming alternating up and down strokes, it allows you to stay firmly in the rhythmic pocket. It’s almost like organic quantizing: You can’t play out of time because the strumming hand always chugs along in time with the basic groove, be it an eighth-note shuffle, a 16th-note funk—whatever. First, let’s hear the scale being picked one string at a time.
Ex. 3 features the blues scale with each note played as consecutive 16th-notes using alternate strumming. This is the most basic form of this technique. Practice this ascending as well as descending through the scale. Focusing on one pair or even a single string can be helpful in clean execution.
The purpose behind using this method of muting is to make your notes have more authority: Own what you play. It also allows your playing, whether melodic or rhythmic, to sit in a serious pocket. The same groove that you infuse in your best chordal rhythm playing is injected into single-note or octave playing too.
Ex. 4 features the lead part playing octaves on the 5th and 3rd strings. How many times have you heard this? Think: Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Foo Fighters—it’s a long list.
Another classic use of this technique can be found in the Michael Jackson hit “Billie Jean.” The driving octaves playing the 5 of the chord make for an effective part where the song goes to the IVm chord (Ex. 5). Once you get the hang of using this muting technique, your drummer friends will see you as much more of a rhythmic ally.
The quarter-note comping over a Bb blues in Ex. 6 features most of the strings being muted via the fretting hand while the strumming hand focuses on laying down a strong backbeat rhythm. You can use not only your fretting-hand’s fingers but also your thumb over the top to mute the 6th string. Remember to lean into beats 2 and 4. This works with an overdriven blues tone or on steel-string acoustic when going for more of a hot club jazz manouche vibe.
Hopefully you’re grasping the many uses and contexts in which this valuable, yet surprisingly under-utilized, technique can be employed. It takes practice to get it right but it pays you back in major dividends. Other players will be looking at your amp and pedalboard to see how you get such an amazing tone—but it’s your fingers, as usual, that hold the secret.
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An ode, and historical snapshot, to the tone-bar played, many-stringed thing in the room, and its place in the national musical firmament.
Blues, jazz, rock, country, bluegrass, rap.… When it comes to inventing musical genres, the U.S. totally nailed it. But how about inventing instruments?
Googling “American musical instruments” yields three.
• Banjo, which is erroneously listed since Africa is its continent of origin.
• Benjamin Franklin’s Glass Armonica, which was 37 glass bowls mounted horizontally on an iron spindle that was turned by means of a foot pedal. Sound was produced by touching the rims of the bowls with water-moistened fingers. The instrument’s popularity did not last due to the inability to amplify the volume combined with rumors that using the instrument caused both musicians and their listeners to go mad.
• Calliope, which was patented in 1855 by Joshua Stoddard. Often the size of a truck, it produces sound by sending steam through large locomotive-style whistles. Calliopes have no volume or tone control and can be heard for miles.
But Google left out the pedal steel. While there may not be a historical consensus, I was talking to fellow pedal-steel player Dave Maniscalco, and we share the theory that pedal steel is the most American instrument.
Think about it. The United States started as a DIY, let’s-try-anything country. Our culture encourages the endless pursuit of improvement on what’s come before. Curious, whimsical, impractical, explorative—that’s our DNA. And just as our music is always evolving, so are our instruments. Guitar was not invented in the U.S., but one could argue it’s being perfected here, as players from Les Paul to Van Halen kept tweaking the earlier designs, helping this one-time parlor instrument evolve into the awesome rock machine it is today.
Pedal steel evolved from lap steel, which began in Hawaii when a teenage Joseph Kekuku was walking down a road with his guitar in hand and bent over to pick up a railroad spike. When the spike inadvertently brushed the guitar’s neck and his instrument sang, Kekuku knew he had something. He worked out a tuning and technique, and then took his act to the mainland, where it exploded in popularity. Since the 1930s, artists as diverse as Jimmie Rodgers and Louis Armstrong and Pink Floyd have been using steel on their records.“The pedal steel guitar was born out of the curiosity and persistence of problem solvers, on the bandstand and on the workbench.”
Immigrants drove new innovations and opportunities for the steel guitar by amplifying the instrument to help it compete for listeners’ ears as part of louder ensembles. Swiss-American Adolph Rickenbacker, along with George Beauchamp, developed the first electric guitar—the Rickenbacker Electro A-22 lap steel, nicknamed the Frying Pan—and a pair of Slovak-American brothers, John and Rudy Dopyera, added aluminum cones in the body of a more traditional acoustic guitar design and created resophonic axes. The pedal steel guitar was born out of the curiosity and persistence of problem solvers, on the bandstand and on the workbench.
As the 20th century progressed and popular music reflected the more advanced harmonies of big-band jazz, the steel guitar’s tuning evolved from open A to a myriad of others, including E7, C6, and B11. Steel guitarists began playing double-, triple-, and even quadruple-necked guitars so they could incorporate different tunings.
In Indianapolis, the Harlan Brothers came up with an elegant solution to multiple tunings when they developed their Multi-Kord steel guitar, which used pedals to change the tuning of the instrument’s open strings to create chords that were previously not possible, earning a U.S. patent on August 21, 1947. In California, equipped with knowledge from building motorcycles, Paul Bigsby revolutionized the instrument with his Bigsby steel guitars. It was on one of these guitars that, in early 1954, Bud Isaacs sustained a chord and then pushed a pedal down to bend his strings up in pitch for the intro of Webb Pierce’s “Slowly.” This I–IV movement became synonymous with the pedal-steel guitar and provided a template for the role of the pedal steel in country music. Across town, church musicians in the congregation of the House of God Keith Dominion were already using the pedal steel guitar in Pentecostal services that transcended the homogeneity of Nashville’s country and Western clichés.
Pedal steels are most commonly tuned in an E9 (low to high: B–D–E–F#–G#–B–E–G#–D#–F#), which can be disorienting, with its own idiosyncratic logic containing both a b7 and major 7. It’s difficult to learn compared to other string instruments tuned to regular intervals, such as fourths and fifths, or an open chord.
Dave Maniscalco puts it like this: “The more time one sits behind it and assimilates its quirks and peculiarities, the more obvious it becomes that much like the country that birthed it, the pedal steel is better because of its contradictions. An amalgamation of wood and metal, doubling as both a musical instrument and mechanical device, the pedal steel is often complicated, confusing, and messy. Despite these contradictions, the pedal-steel guitar is a far more interesting and affecting because of its disparate influences and its complex journey to becoming America’s quintessential musical instrument.”The author dials in one of his 20-watt Sonzera amps, with an extension cabinet.
Knowing how guitar amplifiers were developed and have evolved is important to understanding why they sound the way they do when you’re plugged in.
Let’s talk about guitar amp history. I think it’s important for guitar players to have a general overview of amplifiers, so the sound makes more sense when they plug in. As far as I can figure out, guitar amps originally came from radios—although I’ve never had the opportunity to interview the inventors of the original amps. Early tube amps looked like radio boxes, and once there was an AM signal, it needed to be amplified through a speaker so you could hear it. I’m reasonably certain that other people know more about this than I do.
For me, the story of guitar amps picks up with early Fenders and Marshalls. If you look at the schematics, amplifier input, and tone control layout of an early tweed Fender Bassman, it’s clear that’s where the original Marshall JTM45 amps came from. Also, I’ve heard secondhand that the early Marshall cabinets were 8x12s, and the roadies requested that Marshall cut them in half so they became 4x12s. Similarly, 8x10 SVT cabinets were cut in half to make the now-industry-standard 4x10 bass cabinets. Our amp designer Doug Sewell and I understand that, for the early Fender amps we love, the design directed the guitar signal into half a tube, into a tone stack, into another half a tube, and the reverb would join it with another half a tube, and then there would be a phase splitter and output tubes and a transformer. (All 12AX7 tubes are really two tubes in one, so when I say a half-tube, I’m saying we’re using only the first half.) The tone stack and layout of these amps is an industry standard and have a beautiful, clean way of removing low midrange to clear up the sound of the guitar. I believe all but the first Marshalls came from a high-powered tweed Twin preamp (which was a 80-watt combo amp) and a Bassman power amp. The schematic was a little different. It was one half-tube into a full-tube cathode follower, into a more midrange-y tone stack, into the phase splitter and power tubes and output transformer. Both of these circuits have different kinds of sounds. What’s interesting is Marshall kept modifying their amps for less bass, more high midrange and treble, and more gain. In addition, master volume controls started being added by Fender and Marshall around 1976. The goal was to give more gain at less volume. Understanding these circuits has been a lifelong event for Doug and me.
Then, another designer came along by the name of Alexander Dumble. He modified the tone stack in Fender amps so you could get more bass and a different kind of midrange. Then, after the preamp, he put in a distortion circuit in a switchable in and out “loop.” In this arrangement, the distortion was like putting a distortion pedal in a loop after the tone controls. In a Fender amp, most of the distortion comes from the output section, so turning the tone controls changes the sound of the guitar, not the distortion. In a Marshall, the distortion comes before the tone controls, so when you turn the tone controls, the distortion changes. The way these amps compress and add harmonics as you turn up the gain is the game. All of these designs have real merit and are the basis of our modern tube–and then modeling—amplifiers.
Everything in these amps makes a difference. The circuits, the capacitor values and types, the resistor values and types, the power and output transformers, and the power supplies—including all those capacitor values and capacitor manufacturers.
I give you this truncated, general history to let you know that the amp business is just as complicated as the guitar business. I didn’t even mention the speakers or speaker cabinets and the artform behind those. But what’s most important is: When you plug into the amp, do you like it? And how much do you like it? Most guitar players have not played through a real Dumble or even a real blackface Deluxe Reverb or a 1966 Marshall plexi head. In a way, you’re trusting the amp designers to understand all the highly complex variations from this history, and then make a product that you love playing through. It’s daunting, but I love it. There is a complicated, deep, and rich history that has influenced and shaped how amps are made today.
Tobias bass guitars, beloved by bass players for nearly half a century, are back with the all-new Tobias Original Collection.
Built for unrivaled articulation, low-end punch, and exceptional ergonomics, the all-new Tobias Original Collection comprises an array of six four and five-string bass models all offered in both right and left-handed orientations. The Tobias range features Classic, Killer B, and Growler models, and each is equipped with high-quality hardware from Babicz and Gotoh, active electronics from Bartolini, and the iconic Tobias asymmetrical neck design. Crafted from the finest tonewoods, Tobias Original Collection bass guitars are now available worldwide on Gibson.com, at the Gibson Garage locations, and at authorized Gibson dealers.
The bass world has been clamoring for the return of the authentic, high-end Tobias basses, and now, Tobias has returned. Combining the look and tone of the finest exotic tonewoods, such as quilted maple, royal paulownia, purpleheart, sapele, walnut, ebony, and wenge, with the feel of the famous Tobias Asym asymmetrical neck and the eye-catching shapes of the perfectly balanced contoured bodies, Tobias basses are attractive in look and exceptional in playing feel. However, their sonic versatility is what makes them so well suited to the needs of modern bassists. The superior tone from the exotic hardwoods, premium hardware, and active Bartolini® pickups and preamps results in basses with the tonal flexibility that today’s players require. Don’t settle for less than a bass that delivers everything you want and need –the look, the feel, and the sound, Tobias.
“I’m thrilled to release Tobias basses, emphasizing the use of exotic woods, ergonomics, and authenticity to the original Tobias basses,” says Aljon Go, Product Development Manager for Tobias, Epiphone, and Kramer. “This revival is a dream come true, blending modern craftsmanship with the timeless essence of Tobias.”
“It’s amazing to see this icon of the bass world return,” adds Andrew Ladner, Brand Manager for Epiphone and Kramer. “These models are truly a bass player’s bass, and true to the DNA that makes Tobias world-class—the ace up the sleeve of bass players around the globe since 1978. Today’s players can find that unique voice and feel that only Tobias can offer.”
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
Sublime, fronted by Jakob Nowell, son of late Sublime singer Bradley Nowell, are in the studio writing and recording new songs for an upcoming full-length album. This marks their first new album since 1996.
When not performing at various festivals across North America in 2024, front man Jakob Nowell immersed himself in the Sublime catalog and found a deep sense of connection to his late father. The band is tapping into the 90s nostalgia, writing and recording the new songs with powerhouse producing duo Travis Barker and John Feldmann, in addition to working with producer Jon Joseph (BØRNS). The first single will be released this Summer via their newly established label Sublime Recordings.
"I grew up on Sublime. ‘40oz. to Freedom’ changed the way I listened to music. I’m so honored to be working with the guys in Sublime. Creating music for this album has been so fun and exciting. Bradley comes through his son Jakob while writing in the studio and performing. Chills every day in the studio when he sings and play guitar. This is going to be really special." – Travis Barker
“Sublime has always been a huge influence on me and to be able work with the band has been inspirational and game changing…It has been a highlight of my life to work on such a seminal record with such talented people. I’m so grateful for this opportunity and to continue the legacy and keep it authentic to what they have historically done.” – John Feldmann
After Jakob Nowell’s debut as Sublime’s new front man at Coachella 2024, he and his uncles Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson continued the momentum of this latest chapter of the band, performing at over 20 festivals and shows across North America by the end of last year. Additional highlights from 2024 include Sublime’s late-night television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, a 4-song set on the Howard Stern Show and the band’s first top 10 hit on alternative radio since 1997 with their single “Feel Like That,” featuring the vocals of both Bradley Nowell and his son Jakob together.
2025 is shaping up to be an even busier year for the band, with a handful of headlining shows, high-profile festival appearances to support the release of the new album.
For more information, please visit sublimelbc.com.
Sublime 2025 Tour Dates
- April 5 – LIV Golf Miami – Miami, FL
- April 18 – Red Rocks Amphitheater – Morrison, CO
- May 3 – Beachlife Festival – Redondo Beach, CA
- May 16 – Welcome To Rockville – Daytona Beach, FL
- May 23 – BottleRock Napa Valley – Napa, CA
- May 25 – Boston Calling – Boston, MA
- June 14 – Vans Warped Tour – Washington, DC
- July 12 – 89.7 The River’s 30th Anniversary Show – Omaha, NE
- July 20 – Minnesota Yacht Club Festival – Saint Paul, MN
- September 14 – Sea.Hear.Now – Asbury Park, NJ
- September 19 – Shaky Knees Festival – Atlanta, GA