[ejc]

I had a question in general about playing rhythmic parts with open strings. I'm trying to learn the opening riff to The Hunter by Iced Earth and was wondering if I should be muting the open strings with my left hand/right palm after first hitting them. I never really addressed this before in my playing and it feels like if I just let them ring it's sloppy. Sorry if this a dumb question, just don't want to make a bad habit out of something so small! Thanks.

 

[Naren]

The clean part or the heavy part? The clean part sounds like very little left hand muting. The heavy part is muting the higher strings with the left hand, but the riff is pretty continuous, so there is no real reason to left hand-mute lol the lowest 3 strings. There is quite a bit of right hand muting going on and off there, though.

 

[Tom]

It depends on what you're trying to do. Muting with your picking hand makes it chug, and muting with your fretting hand makes the note stop.

 

[JBroll]

Don't forget that keeping your fretting hand close enough to the nut (or the fret being played) can give a palm-mute-like sound as well. (This really comes in handy for partially muting notes or getting palm-mute sounds with wilder picking hand movements that don't work well with palm-muting.)

Jeff