Palm Muting
Palm muting is a great technique that can be used to give a passage a tighter feel. It takes the treble off of a note and makes the tone warmer. You can hear palm muting in action on many of Herb Ohta Jr.’s tunes as well as popular guitar songs like “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” by Van Halen.
Doing a palm mute on the ‘ukulele can restrict your finger movement due to the positioning of the hand. Be careful when palm muting a hard section or you might end up in trouble.
How to palm mute:
- Rest the side of your picking hand onto and parallel with the bridge. The inside edge of your hand should rest on the strings as they go over the saddle.
- Angle your hand towards the headstock a bit.
- Curl your fingers so that you can reach the strings.
Now you can pick and hear a muted note. It’s probably going to be easier to use some of your fingers with the thumb instead of just the thumb. How far onto the strings you move your hand determines the heaviness of the mute. Don’t move too far or your hand will turn into a moving bridge and make everything sharp.
The reason you hear a muted sound is because the edge of your hand rests on the very end of the vibrating string. The end of the string is where most of the treble frequencies are produced so dampening there slows down the high end.
