| hi,
well a it's a case of sincronizing your left and right hands, making sure they're working all the time to avoid noise. Some of my playing is done with the side of my right hand across the strings, picking with my thumb and fingers. commonly known as palm-muting. when I'm not using this technique, I make sure that my thumb is resting on the botom string on the right hand, and that the fingers on my left hand, when not fretting a note, are paralel with the frets and are muting the strings that aren't in use.
The best way to get comfortable with this is to start off slow, with basic scales and excercises. making sure there's no noise between notes if that's the sound you're going for. A lot of noise comes from poor basic technique, and people trying to play things too fast without having worked on them slowly first.
And as for St. Lucia!! I was last there in 2003 and played on both the Pigeon island Main stage at the closing of the festival and in a square. I forget the name of the place in the square. I'm working on bringing my group out to the festival in 2007, so keep checking the myspace page for updates and tour schedule.
Easy,
Janek | 
