There are a lot of techniques that you can employ when it comes to playing the guitar. One of the most popular and commonly used guitar techniques is palm muting.

Palm muting is one technique that is widely used in the rock and metal genres. It is also sometimes called palm muffling instead of palm muting since it implies that there is almost a complete absence of sound from the guitar.

You might be thinking of the rule of avoiding muffles notes and strings. Understandably, you will find it quite ironic as the rule would dictate. But the idea of palm muting is to muffle the entire chord with the strumming hand while your fretting fingers are positioned properly.

The effect that palm muting tries to drive at is the deadening of the notes while retaining the tonality. This is a great way to create some kind of dynamics in your guitar playing.

Of course, you’re excited to find out how to palm mute. To effectively palm mute, you will need to make sure that your strumming hand is in the right position. And that means resting the pinky side of your palm on the guitar’s bridge as you strum. Note that if you rest your hand too near the sound hole, it will kill the tone of the chord’s notes. Of course, you don’t want that. If you rest your hand too far back, the strings will be allowed to ring freely, allowing less muffling. And you don’t want that, too. So remember to place the palm on the guitar bridge and pick on your strings. You can move your hand forward or backward to zoom in on the optimal spot. Also, you have to apply just the right amount of pressure on the strings. Too much pressure can eliminate the sound completely. And of course, that just defeats that purpose of palm muting. Uneven pressure will have some notes muted and some notes ringing. So you have to make sure that everything is evened out.

Ideally, you will hear all the notes of the chord just this time, muffled. Of course, when you’re starting out, it wouldn’t sound as "clean" as what Papa Roach does on their song, Last Resort. But a little practice will definitely improve things.

Palm muting is best for power chords as it is widely used in rock and metal songs. Listen to Green Day’s Basket Case. It is one good example of a song with lots of palm muting involved.