This month Simon Barnard digs deep and demonstrates how palm muting can be used to add weight and tighten up your playing.

Metallica’s James Hetfield is one of the world’s most famous palm muters

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Palm muting, which is often associated with rock and metal guitar styles, is an excellent technique to add extra chunk and articulation to riffs, chords and at times, lead lines. Although often associated with the heavier side of genres, this technique dates back many decades and has been used by the likes of Buddy Holly in his hit That’ll Be The Day and in Bob Marley’s Stir It Up. Green Day’s Basket Case shows how the technique is a staple of the punk genre and thrash acts such as Metallica just wouldn’t sound the same without the sound of James Hetfield’s picking hand digging into the strings for tight palm-muted sections. The combination of palm muting alongside un-muted notes provides an excellent contrast in tone to create interesting rhythmical and dynamic phrases, which you will see demonstrated in this month’s examples.