Thanks for the replies Troy! I think I am most interested in the index barre as some sort of muting device. Sometimes I feel that index barre mutes other strings and eliminates some extraneous noise or hides picking mistakes like hitting an unwanted string. My picking mistakes are a whole separate issue that can be dealt with right hand technique but do you see any merit with index barre muting in your playing or others?
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Not 100% following what youāre asking but left hand muting is definitely necessary for high gain playing where string noise becomes a problem. Personally, though, I try not to rely on muting of either hand to hide unwanted notes. Whatever movement Iām working on, I always try to make it hit only the note Iām playing.
Of course like everyone I hit things unintentionally all the time. But the fact that Iām at least trying not to do that makes it happen less. The muting is just there as a safety. But if Iām playing a clean tone, for example, and I canāt remove the muting entirely and still sound good, then that tells me I havenāt learned the motion well enough for it to be reliable.
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Hey I want to bump this because this question is one i still struggle with. index/middle/pinky is so much harder for me than index/ring/pinky, and I recently realized that when I properly anchor my first finger the playing is way smoother. This is for ascending only, as I already anchor on descending. The question is, how do you practice NOT doing something (in this case not raising your index after the pinky)? I donāt really need to practice pulling off as i want to work on picking for this. I suppose just slow drilling, but if anyone has any advice on this Iād appreciate it! PS-its so cool that I can ask a question like this on a dedicated forum!
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I have been drilling this āRusty Cooley styleā (5 minutes relaxed no metronome) and the difference has been amazing. Just 1,2,4 with focusing on keeping the first finger anchored. So much cleaner already! I know this is useless without a video, sorry Iāll try and update this week. But yeah, definitely anchoring the index finger for meā¦
Troy, if you bar your finger for EJ pentatonics, does that mean you bar all six strings and just keep it planted there the whole time? or do you kind of lift the whole finger after each two note sequence just enough to re-mute the strings so they dont ring out? Or, do you just bar like 2 or 3 strings at a time and then move the bar down as you descend?