Guitar Lesson Three - Right Hand Technique

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Guitar Lesson Three - Right hand Technique

RIGHT HAND

Once a player learns to use a lot of hammers and pulls, They are in danger of developing HEINEKEN HAND. This is where your right hand does little more than hold your beer.

In order to avert this possible crisis, we are going to explore one of the ways (besides just picking the notes) that the right hand applies ARTICULATION.

MUTING:

Muting has two functions:

To keep the strings that you're not playing from making any sound (especially at high volume)

To slightly dampen the sound of the notes that you are playing (essential if you're playing with tons o' distortion)

Function 1 will be the subject of future lessons.

Function 2 is what we're going to explore in this lesson.

PALM MUTE is a technique whereby, you place the edge of your right palm (the part you would do a "Karate chop" with) lightly on the strings between the BRIDGE (see Guitar Anatomy) and the BRIDGE PICKUP (the pickup nearest the bridge) in order to make single notes more distinct and your power chords more "chunky".

Start by resting your right hand on the bridge itself, and while keeping that hand anchored to the bridge, play a few power chords using the E and A-strings.

Now, try moving your right hand onto the strings a little ways and play a few more chords.

What your after is to move the hand onto the strings just enough to dampen them a little without causing them to go dead. You'll have to experiment with how far onto the strings you place your hand. Every guitar has a "sweet spot" for muting. When you find that spot, you'll find that your power chords really come to life.

With practice, you'll learn to move your picking hand up and down along the bridge in order to cover whatever group of strings you're playing power chords on.

When it comes to muting strings while your playing a lead solo, You'll need a lot of control with the right hand. (Check out Al Di Meola's Elegant Gypsy album if you want to hear a master of muting at work.)

Below is the beginning of Just What I Needed by the cars.

The tricky part is to go from the muted single notes to the un-muted chords and back again. Just hold the power chord like you normally would with the left hand. With the right hand, mute the A-string and be sure to only pick that string for the single notes. Then lift the picking hand off of the strings for the un-muted chords. [Use all down-strokes with the pick.] (the left hand doesn't have to do anything different except that when you play the muted notes, relax your ring finger so that the D and G-strings will stop ringing) Turn the gain down a bit on the lead channel of your amp until you get just enough distortion for some "crunch" and try not to look too much like an '80s leftover as you play it:

If its not obvious, all notes and chords that have the RED LINE over them are muted and those without are not muted.

Also, If you don't have the sound of this one ingrained into your central nervous system already, here's an MP3 of me playing it:

I'm just a "new wave" kinda guy!

This lesson is divided into four parts

Theory

Technique - Left Hand

Technique - Right Hand

Music

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