Getting your arm and wrist accustomed to the best motion for technique and tempo is essential
In this Gibson App video, you’ll get an overview of how to position your hand, wrist, and arm for maximum control of different techniques. The Gibson App provides visual feedback on the tempo of a passage, but you’ll also learn to begin trusting your ears for this information.
Integrating it all together for a growing fluency is what it’s all about. Whether picking solos or strumming rhythmically, you’ll gain insights that help you produce clear notes.
Depending on your guitar type, the placement of your picking hand will become somewhat of a personal decision influenced by the guitar’s design. You’ll learn that resting your hand on the bridge is not precisely the same as palm muting, a technique you’ll master. Learning how to shift your palm away from the strings or toward them will always be vital regardless of the style you focus on the most.
Learning how to mute strings with your palm intuitively is the gateway to several styles, such as heavy metal, slide, and even shoegaze, because you’ll need a way to control feedback and create clean transitions when using lots of overdrive, distortion, or fuzz. It’s also a huge part of controlling which strings ring out and for how long.
Palm muting is also an important aspect of changing the timbre of more complex rhythms—ask any funk player. Notes ringing out, palm muting, and flicking the wrist or arm to pepper your playing with rhythmic style is part of falling in love with all a guitar has to offer.
If today is my first day with a guitar of my own, which Gibson App learning series should I start with?
Begin learning the fundamentals of how to hold the guitar and how to pick a note. Then, take advantage of the Gibson App tuner so that the music you make is in tune.
Who are some of the guitar players who have mastered picking, palm-muting, and strumming?
No conversation about strumming is complete without Pete Townshend, whose rhythm playing in The Who is regarded by many as a high-water mark in rock guitar. He also did a killer job of making a Gibson SG Special sound like an acoustic guitar by rolling back the volume control. And when it comes to integrating palm-muting into heavy metal rhythm guitar, Metallica frontman James Hetfield is one of the undisputed champions.
Al Di Meola is considered a master of all three techniques and makes an excellent study of them. He put a Les Paul™ guitar through its paces in all his early work, including masterpieces like “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway.” Later, he included intense picking and strumming on acoustic guitar, collaborating with giants like John McLaughlin—no stranger to a Gibson guitar—and Paco DeLucia.
Explore the world of the Gibson App today and start your free trial on iOS and Android devices.
