Newbie with muting questions

[sydandpaigesdad]

Hey guys been taking lessons for couple months, loving it btw, traded in my Ibanez acoustic for a squier jaguar today and it's made things a lot simpler lol. Anyways my instructor gave me the intro to "my girl" to work on for next week and one problem I'm running into is we haven't worked on muting yet and as I practice I get the rhythm but it all sounds garbled as I can't mute the strings lol, figured I'd seek out advice rather than just muddle through until next week, thanks in advance,

[MalcolmAmos]

My advise would be muddle through until you can get back with your instructor. Why? Well are you sounding the notes with your fingers, your thumb or a pick?

Each involves a different mute system. We will just confuse you more. Back off on the gain and see if that helps.

[sydandpaigesdad]

Sorry using fingers

[funkybass]

I mute with a combination of fretting and plucking hand. I use floating thumb, so if I'm playing on the a string I'm anchoring my thumb on e string, muting it. If I'm playing the d string my thumb is on the a string muting the e and a strings,etc. I'll also let off the pressure of my fretting hand to mute too.

[kr0n]

You mute the upper (G D A) with your fretting hand and E with thumb if playing with thumb as an anchor on PU/E-string. Keeping your fretting hand on the strings lightly and reducing pressure from notes so that your finger stays on the string. But ask your instructor more.

[c4lvint1me]

i have a question.. could you mute the E with the thumb, A with your ring finger, D and G with your plucking fingers??

[fearceol]

I would have thought that after two months of lessons the teacher would have covered muting. It is part of basic technique which, IMO is one of the first things that should be taught/learned.

Having said that, I would recommend that you check out the floating thumb technique. Here is a link to it.

‪Todd Johnson Bass Guitar : Floating thumb technique‬‏ - YouTube

[mambo4]

Just to be clear, are we talking about :
muting =" completely silencing the strings you don't want to ring"
or muting = "partially muting the string for a non-tonal percussive effect"?

[kr0n]

Originally Posted by c4lvint1me

i have a question.. could you mute the E with the thumb, A with your ring finger, D and G with your plucking fingers??

Sure, I do it often when I'm playing a lick on G/D. Or if I spend a lot of time on those two I switch my thumb to A.

I especially do it when I rake down from D/G to an, move the ring finger along the index/middle at a certain distance so it touches to the A string.