Trouble playing fast lines with varying muting

Playing Technique
#1

Hi all, I’ve been a member for a little while now but this is my first post.

I’m having trouble maintaing a smooth motion when playing passages that quickly alternate between palm muted and open notes.
I find it really difficult to achieve anything close to the speeds I’m capable of when an entire line is either muted or open.

A simple example would be something like “0-5-8-0-5-8-0-5-8” where only the ‘0’ notes are palm muted. My picking motion starts feeling similar to the bounce you feel when stringhopping and it completely throws me off.

Does anyone have any advice or tips that might help me with these sorts of lines?

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#2

Interesting, that looks challenging! What is the tempo?

Also, do you have any example of guitarists that can do this successfully? Maybe we can learn something by looking at elite players who can do this!

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#3

That would be ruthless for sure. I find it hard enough just strumming with appropriate muting and accents, nevermind just running single notes.

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#4

I don’t have any specific examples off the top of my head, it’s just something I’ve been messing around with in my own playing lately.

I think a more common example of this might be how metal players might use muted pedal notes with open accents in fast riffing. Something like “0-0-1-0-0-3-0-0-4” where again only the ‘0’ notes are muted.

#5

Ususally if I have combination of muted and nonmuted notes I play it downstrokes all the way. Obviously, it’s speed limiting (ususally below 100-110bpm). With downstrokes it’s not a difficult task - you just “jumping” on strings.
As for alternate picking I can’t tell much.

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#6

I think maybe it’s not quite the commonplace technique I had previously assumed.
My main reason for asking about it was that I was thinking it was something everyone else could do and I must’ve been missing something.
I can currently play 16th notes at around 160bpm as all open-sounding notes or all muted notes, but when attemping things like the examples in my previous comments I’d be lucky to play at even half that.

#7

This is a tone thing!!

Chug if you want it to be a percussive thing - Dig in deep, mute hard - no particular distortion settings.

Scuff if you want it to be precise and melodic - super light picking and very very light muting - requires specialised distortion and pre-eq settings to get this to sound good.

Scuff will give you the higher speeds!

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#8

It’s just how I do it. May be it is commonplace technique, it’s just that I donn’t ususally use this stuff with alternate picking. May be I’m just too lazy to learn new technique ) For my ears - after some tempo the difference between open and muted sounds is blurred. So I just don’t bother myself )

Here’s my example with downstrokes slow tempo:

The distinction is clear

Here’s an example with alternate picking.

I use it more as a textural thing…

I guess it depends on style after all. For some stuff you might need alternate picking with ‘alternate muting’.

#9

In this fast second clip are you palm-muting and lifting off the strings for the higher/accented notes? I can’t quite tell due to the gain and only being able to listen on laptop speskers at the moment. You definitely make a good point about it being harder to actually distinguish muted from unmuted as the tempo goes up.

#10

Yes, I play low E string and throw random open notes… wel, not really random, it’s a xxxx0xx0xx0xxxxx repeated pattern.

#12

I don’t know what it is about that pattern but it feels so much more intuitive than the things I’ve been trying?

#13

I also just realized I can play things like this SO much faster if the notes are muted and open/unmute on a downstroke.It feels like the ‘lifting off the strings’ motion blends with the downstoke motion.

#14

I guess so. As I said earlier I’m not a big fan of alternate picking with mixed muting. Even if I play something that way I usually end up with some rhythmic structure unconciously.

I told you, downstroke is the key )) Though I tend to overuse it, using it even in cases where alternate picking would be more easy probably. I guess I just like the feeling.

With repeated arpeggio patterns like in your example I would rather stick with a constant soft palmmuting if I had to play it more or less fast.

it has that neoclassicish/melodeth flavour.

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#15

Thanks so much for all your responses, it has definitely helped clear up some confusion for me.
It’s also really helpful just to get some insight into what other players consider challenging and how they would approach certain things. Especially since I live in a pretty remote area so I rarely get the chance to pick other players’ brains. Sometimes I wonder how my own abiliies would generally compare to other ‘normal’ players out there.