cleanin up my playing

[mctriple]

ive known for a good long time that my technique is pretty sloppy, especially the way that i let notes ring when i shouldn't, so i'm tryin to find some good ways to clean up my sound. right now an example im thinkin of is saxon - princess of the night. can any of you guys play it cleanly (the intro)? i try palm muting right after each note, but it's just so quick.. i can't seem to get it nearly fast enough. taking my left hand off the notes seems a bit better, but it's still not quite there, since it switches back and forth so quick. maybe master of puppets' intro is a more common example. i can play all of these songs quite fast, but it's still sloppy.. i never felt like cleaning things like that up til now.

how do you guys get a nice clean, "choppy" sound?

edit: well i found better tabs of princess of the night and none of them give me this problem. playin

d--8-----8-----8-----
a--8-----8-----8-----
E----6-6---6-6--6-6--

was giving me a lot of problems with excess noise. how would you do it that way though? i do like the sounds more than just playing the riff on 2 strings like a power chord over and over.

[andras]

lift the fretting fingers slightly to dampen strings 4 &5 and use the right hand to mute strings 4&5. easy.

[mctriple]

both at the same time for those strings? and just palm mute 6?

[Undying_Hatred]

I just run the join of my thumb against the string after I play pinch style.

[johnmansley]

I dampen with my fretting hand. Basically just release the pressure on the string in your fretting hand after the note you want to damp has sounded but still maintain contact with the strings. Keeping your fingers on the strings at all times will almost guarantee that you'll cut down your string noise. It then becomes a simpler (in my opinion anyway) case of lifting your fingers when you want a note to sound.

It takes time but eventually it will become second nature to do it - whether you choose to dampen with your left, right or a mixture of the two. I myself found that when dampening a note with the picking hand, I could always hear a slight buzz so I solely employ left hand damping in my playing.

You could also check out the bridge riff to Zero Signal by Fear Factory for another example similar to that above.

[mctriple]

yah i did notice some almost harmonic-like noises sometimes when i try to mute with my left hand. thanks for the tip.. i'll work on letting go of the pressure while still holding onto the strings :)

[johnmansley]

Yeah, the harmonic will sound if you release the pressure on the string too much. As I said, with practise it will become second nature and I'll bet you wont even realise that you begin to damp on other riffs. If you don't have to think about it then you've cracked it!

[atifman]

if you damp with both hands, you don't have to worry about harmonics.

[fritz]

If you are having problems running scales and solos on the higher frets, make sure your action isn't too low. An action that isn't set up right will cause notes to ring, horribly.

[Mortal_Lament]

Heh, dude...y dont u get a used cry baby? Fuckin so much easyer, jsut dont use it as second nature, just the odd songs....

[johnmansley]

I see what you mean, Mortal, but I think it would just paper over the cracks and prolong the inevitability of having to clean up his playing anyway.

However, for beginners, using a Wah will hide some of the "inaccuracies" that occur at that stage and can give you a little more confidence.

I still wouldn't recomment it though, especially as McTrip seems to be quite accomplished anyway.

[Seve420]

If you haven't yet, learn basic sweep picking. This forces you to be able to mute the strings with your fretting hand by just releasing the pressure on the strings but not taking your fingers off too soon so the strings ring. Just make sure you start off very slowly and use a metronome.

[mctriple]

yah i've been working on sweeps, and that helps.

however, in songs such as satch boogie (i know my taste differs from what is usually found here) that i was working on today, there are open notes which need to be muted, otherwise they all jumble up. i noticed that i don't seem to move my right hand down when i pick the higher notes, so moving it with my pick allowed me to palm mute the open strings after playing them, but it was still pretty hard. i guess i need to work more on right hand muting with the palm?