Lesson 3 — Metal Guitar Riffs Using the Palm-Mute Technique

Compare the power chords I played with palm muting to regular playing:

To switch to palm muting, rest the edge of your picking hand on the strings near the bridge to slightly muffle them there.

While keeping your hand in this position, pick the strings with a plectrum as usual, and that's all there is to it! ;)

Experiment with varying amounts of pressure the heel of your picking hand applies to the strings, and with how close that hand is to the bridge, and find what sounds best for you.

In guitar tabs, palm mutes are indicated by P.M. abbreviation.

If there's a series of palm mutes, the P.M. abbreviation and a dotted line that follows designate this area:

When the dotted line ends, you open up palm mute and play in a regular position.

Now let's play some riffs!

Pay attention that in the second half of the riff, the first chord in each bar is played without palm muting, the contrast of muted and not-muted power chords makes the riffs sound more interesting than if they would be played fully with a muffled tone.

Pay attention that the power chords in this phrase consist of three notes, where the highest note is simply a copy of the root note, but located an octave higher. This trick allows you to get a fatter distorted sound from the guitar.

This riff and the following riff #4 perfectly connect into a theme. Practice over each riff separately, until you play them accurately, after that play one riff after another as a whole piece:

Note that I play the riff slightly differently at the second time, by playing the 3rd bar twice, (the 4th bar is replaced with the 3rd one) and finishing up the phrase with the A power chord:

When you feel ready to move on, jump to the next lesson - 12 Bar Blues Progression where I've put a couple of cool blues riffs and introduced shuffle rhythm.

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