THE SECRET to Palm Muting + 4 COOL STRUMMING PATTERNS

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. In this lesson video, we're going to be going over palm muting for both the acoustic and the electric guitar. Let's get into the video.

So this video is going to be broken up into four sections. First, I'm just going to tell you briefly what is palm muting, what's the cool aspects of it, how to find it. Okay. On your guitar, we're going to do an acoustic example, and I'm going to pop onto my electric guitar, show you how to find that on the electric guitar as well. And then the fourth and final section of the end of the video is going to show you a couple cool little strumming things, strumming techniques that you can use with this palm muting technique. So first, let's just talk about the technique in general before I get into finding it on an acoustic guitar. So it's called palm muting because we're going to be muting with the palm of our hand. All right, so we're. And it's not flat. We're kind of using the edge, this fatty part of the hand. And typically we. When we're strumming, we're only hitting the top two or three strings. This works really great with power chords. I use this on acoustic guitar a lot. But I'll show you. You can put distortion on your amp later with when you get into the electric guitar. Sounds really, really great on an electric guitar as well. So when we strum, if I just play like an E power chord here, when we strum regularly, the chords ring out. But when we do palm muting, they have this cool, chunky.

So you can do really cool little rhythm and percussive things with palm muting. But it's a very, very cool technique. So like I said, we're just playing maybe the top two or three strings of the guitar, the thickest strings, usually, because we're playing power chords with this. And the other thing is we are muting with this fatty part of the palm, and we're doing that on the bridge. Now this is where I'm going to show you how to find the sweet spot. Because whether you're playing an acoustic or whether you're playing an elect electric, they each have their own different sweet spots. So what I'm going to do first, since I have the acoustic in my hand, is I'm going to show you on an acoustic guitar first. Then I'm going to show you on my electric guitar. So what I tell students to do when we're getting into this Palm muting technique and finding it is start kind of where the neck meets the body of the guitar. So if you're an acoustic guitar player, I would start maybe just in front of the sound hole. Now I'm just gonna strum the top three strings, okay. And you can play a chord if you want to. It's not important at this stage. The stage is we're listening for that sound. Okay. So I'm gonna do it once. I want you to listen. This is what we're going for. Okay? Listen to it up here. See here, Here the notes just die.

I strum and they die. It's a very tinny sound. So we're just gonna slide our palm down towards the bridge here. Hear how it's thickening up? Okay, it's thickening up, but it's not sustaining. So we're not there yet. We're not at that sweet spot. There we go. Hear it now Hear how the notes have a little bit of a ring to them. Okay. If you go too far, if you go too far, the notes are going to start ringing. So once again we're going to start up here just in front of the sound hole. Slowly move that palm and I'll go in for a close up.

It's starting to thicken up. Getting close, but not there yet.

There it is. Here it open up.

And it gets more of this chunky sound. There's a little bit of sustain. The notes aren't. They're dying, but not right away. And if you add a chord to this.

Just sounds really cool. So you think of something. Neil Young Rockin in the Free World.

I think it's different chords but it's same, same idea. You can hear that.

So he uses palm muting in a very, very cool way. And when you do it on the electric and add distortion, it can sound really, really cool. So let me go in for a close up on the acoustic guitar to show you guys before I jump on to my electric. Okay, so here I am on the close up. Now remember, every guitar is going to be different. So you're going to want to do this on your guitar. So start here. Alright. And when I'm strumming, I'm only strumming kind of like these top three strings. I'm not strumming all the way through. Okay. And I'm using all down picks here. Okay, here we go. Slide that palm.

Towards the bridge.

There it is. Did you hear it open up? And I'm maybe like a quarter to an eighth of an inch off this bridge. Okay, I'm right. If you go too far, if you end up behind the bridge, the strings are just going to ring again. So you want to be just in front. And again, like I said, it's going to be different on every guitar. So you want to do this on your guitar.

Hear it. Did you hear how that opened up? I'm going to do it one more time. Listen and see if you can hear when it opens up, and then try it on your guitar.

So see if you can find that sweet spot on your acoustic guitar. It's a really great sound. It can take some practice. You may not be able to get this right away, or you may find it and it goes away. It comes in and out. But the more you practice, the more likely you'll be able to sustain that palm muting sound. Real quick, before I jump onto the electric guitar, if you. If you're enjoying this video, don't forget to subscribe to the channel and turn your notifications on so that you'll see when I release more videos just like this one. All right, guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. I've got an electric guitar in my hands now. Everyone asks me, lauren, when are you going to play the Gretsch? Can you take the Gretsch off the wall? So I took the Gretsch off. I have the Ibanez up here now. So what I'm going to do is show you with this guitar. Now, this guitar has kind of like floating bridge in the middle. So where I'm going to play on this electric versus that electric is going to be different because you can see my strings connect down here on the Ibanez. So my palm is probably going to be closer to the bridge here. But my strings connect kind of on this little whammy bar down here. But my palm is actually going to be up further. I'm not going to be towards the back just because of the connection point for the string. So again, I'm kind of going to be in front of this little floating bridge here, so I have a clean sound first. I will put distortion on in a minute, but I just want to go through the same process you would go through on an electric guitar. So there's my guitar on a clean tone. And what we're going to do is again, I would start at your front pickup on an electric and you're going to hear again, not a lot of sound. Slowly move that palm backwards.

Okay, it's coming through a little bit more. I'm over the bridge pickup now, but I'm going to keep Going because I'm not there yet. There it is. Okay. And with the amp, you can probably hear it a little bit better than on the acoustic. Listen. One more time. Ready? I'm going to start. It's going to be shallow, and then all of a sudden it's going to open up. That's how you know you've hit the sweet spot with this palm mu.

So cool. Sounds great, right? So what can we do with this on an electric guitar? Well, let me turn on the distortion and show you how this really sounds. All right, so I've just put high gain on my little spark amp here. And this is what it's going to sound like now. Okay. So before we had this very clean tone. Now here it is with the distortion.

Totally different sound. So if we are do the same thing with the distortion on.

Yeah. So if you're into like rock music and metal, this is where palm muting really, really comes into form. So next I'm going to do is show you some strumming patterns that we can use with this palm muting technique. But if you want pause the video, go back, whether you're on acoustic or electric, go back, figure out where you are, where your sweet spot is on your particular guitar, and then we'll talk about some strumming patterns. So with palm muting, oftentimes we use what are called accented rhythms. And you probably just heard me doing that a short while ago. And it's where we have the palm muting is not the accent. Okay. That's where. That's where it's ringing through. The accent comes when we lift the. The palm away from the guitar. So for example, this first strumming pattern I'm going to show you has an accent on the first beat. So I'm going to let the first beat ring and then I'm going to palm mute the rest of the strumming patterns. Okay, we're going to do an eighth note strumming pattern. One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and. But you're going to listen. I won't. I'll try not to count. People yell at me sometimes and I count. The first beat is going to be accents. So I'll count the first two demos and then I'll do two more demos without me counting. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And.

That sounds really, really cool as an accented rhythm. So the next one I'm going to show you is accenting on the second beat and the fourth beat. Very, very common rhythm. So it'll be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Okay, so that's going to be our accent. Ready? One and two and three and four. And one and three.

Four, two, four.

Okay. Very, very cool sound. Very, very cool little rhythm that you can practice there. An earlier example I talked about was Rocking in the Free World. And now that I have an electric guitar with a little bit of distortion, sometimes with a lot of rock music, what they'll do is they'll use palm muting for a measure. Then they'll play a couple other chords and let those ring out. That's exactly what happens in Rocking in the Free World. We have a measure of this E minor or E power chord here. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. And then we have a D chord, 1 and 2 and. Okay, I think it goes D to.

So you see, they let the chords ring out. So there's kind of like this play between palm muting. So we have a measure of E minor, palm muted. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. And then the D. 1 and 2 and 3 and four. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and four and.

And you can use power chords too, if you want to.

Okay. Either way. Whichever way you want to play. But you can hear how we have this palm muting, which creates this kind of crunchy and. And chuggy dynamic. And then you have the open chords. All right. Which sounds really, really cool when you got the amp with the distortion. You can do all of this same stuff on an acoustic guitar as well. Sounds really good. I'm going to pop back on the acoustic real quick to show you one more thing. Before I jump into this last example. I just want to let you guys know if you're enjoying this. I do have an entire strumming course that incorporates more of this percussive playing, palm muting. If you guys are interested in checking that out, I'll put a link in the description below with a little coupon for you guys. So I just wanted to give you one more example of something I tend to do a lot more on an acoustic guitar when I'm strumming, which is I will palm mute kind of half the strumming pattern and then let the rest of the strumming pattern ring through. Now, palm muting on an acoustic guitar, you know, doesn't sound as aggressive as an electric with distortion, but it can sound really cool. So let me show you. For example here, if I just play again, I'll go back to our E minor chord.

So I'm playing. The strumming pattern I'm doing is 1 and 1 and 2 and a 3 and 4 and a 1 and 2 and a 3 and four and a. But it sounds really cool. Instead of just going.

Now listen to the different dynamic just by adding a little bit of palm muting in the mix here.

Very, very cool sound. Very, very cool dynamic for you guys to finish off here on the acoustic guitar. I hope you enjoyed this video. I on palm muting. YouTube's going to suggest a couple more videos up here. Go check those out. And I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.