He shows what he does to mute in other videos and it’s most of the pinky side of the hand. He specifically points out the whole area he uses. Some of the folder over pinky mutes the higher strings also when he is tracking lower, although his hands are so big that he barely has to move much. He also uses the bridge pickup bobbin as a sort of tactile reference.
The angle of the shot is key. In shots floating around that show his picking hand from the pick holding front side and he doesn’t have much of a tilt at all - It looks pretty “trapped” and he sort of skates over the strings when possible, He also uses thumb movement that is hard to catch.
I think the confusion stems from the whole “upward pickslanting” thing. That can cause pronation which could take people away from where they are able to get a good palm mute happening. Keys to remember: 1)you can get DSX with no pickslant; 2)contact point doesn’t have to be on that pinky heel side (though it can be if the overall setup and anatomy is right as @Fossegrim pointed out with gilbert);3)to get the sweet spot, something else might have to change, like pick grip or degree of pronation or contact point
Nah not impossible. I think the contact point would just move. I asked Bill Hall how he does it from a pronated position in some other thread. I’d forgotten what he said but I will dig it up.
To clear up some confusion, when I was referring to the pinky heel anchor point touching the bridge, I meant that it’s unlikely there would be an upward slant, but still dsx. I wasn’t being particularly clear in my comments!
Well it also helps to clarify what type of muting we are talking about. Muting to deaden the strings that you don’t want to ring out, or muting for chugging rhythms and or staccato lead playing. The latter is really sensitive to where you are placing your hand to mute if you want it to sound good, and complicated by the fact that it isn’t in the same area vertically across all the strings.
Pick grip, degree of probation, contact point etc. are all very important factors in all of it.
FWIW, I don’t recommend anybody try and copy how Paul plays unless you are a ‘6.4 Ectomorph with long alien hands. If you like what he does just focus on pick attack and his lines however you can do it. Those are the two most important things about how he sounds.
I’ve seen Paul Gilbert live in 2019-ish, as far as I could see he does the 3-finger grip to play most of his recent material, but goes back to his standard grip for the moments of “intense rock-style shred”
Great points. I shouldn’t put words in peoples mouth but I assumed we were talking about the “chugging” stuff. Around here I’ve seen the terms “noise control” or “dampening” referring to that “other” type of muting.
I wonder if he’s exaggerating the upward slant to prove a point there? He doesn’t actually play in that posture.
We get a great shot of his palm muting at 4:48. It’s what I’d consider the “classic” palm mute that most people are taught. The pinky side / palm heel. Same way I’d do it if I were playing Master of Puppets. And, as we’d expect, there is no upward slant happening there in Paul’s playing
Great advice. I think there are generalities that are worth imitating in any player, but certain specifics could very well become personal/anatomical and have us barking up the wrong tree. Bottom line, everything we do should feel comfortable. If it’s not, it’s wrong. All the greats found their own technique by intuition and I can’t imagine any of them saying “Uggghhh…that felt extremely uncomfortable. I should probably do more of that”. More likely, they moved on until they found what felt/sounded good and worked forward from there.
We know Bill is pronated when he does his bread and butter elbow motion, but he mentions flattening out his palm to get the muting to happen. Does that mean he has to just slightly supinate? I’ve tried a few things just now and that’s what I have to do to get palm muting working while maintaining an upward slant (again, just so we don’t drift backward 6 years I have to stress that we don’t NEED and upward slant for DSX!!!). So I’m still in a pronated position but getting palm muting with my pinky heel.
I’ll film some magnet shots and put them in a new thread. All this talk is interesting but unfortunately…off topic lol
He kind of uses the pad of his index more with the side of his middle for some support. He used to switch between that and his regular playing, but I just saw some recent-ish mr big footage where he was using it for everything thing.
When I first saw him do that, my thought was that he may have some arthritis from doing what he has been doing for so many years.
My guess, from watching this and from watching a lot of his other videos, is that he plays mostly perpendicular, with a double-escape motion, but tilts up or down for particular licks, when it feels comfortable for him to do so.
And as he goes on to say in that video, he doesn’t feel compelled to pick everything. So, while some of his licks feature ludicrously fast alternate picking, he is mixing in a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs, and it’s often going by at such speeds that it’s difficult for a listener to notice.
He does often exaggerate motions when he showing them slowly to showcase the concept. In some videos he jumps his hand far above the plane of the strings to demonstrate the idea. He doesn’t ever play that way, and if you were to copy exactly what he shows, there’s no way you would be playing with any kind of speed.
Funny right?
That kind brings back to something I think I’ve said on here before, and Its that I think a lot of people for better or worse, develop their lead playing hand positioning from their rhythm playing which makes sense since rhythm playing is usually the first thing you learn. And people that started off using that “classic” palm mute to play master of puppets still use that hand positioning for their lead playing. I know for a fact I do. Maybe I’m generalizing though.
:
