solo - how to avoid resonance to get a clear solo-sound???

[merano]

Yesterday I listend to my favorite CD "nothing but the blues" and was - like everytime - impressed by the fat and intense sound of Gary Moore. Since some days I managed to get a somehow simular sound with doubling, compression and hi gain distortion.
So far so good. Now I can play very intense bendings and vibrato stuff - but its impossible to play fast licks especialy from deep tones to high tones because of the resonance soundings of the deeper strings.
I try to damp them whith the root of my right thumb - but this slows down very much!
I have a lot of trainingvideos on my harddisc, but I not able to see how Petrucci & Co manage to get such a clear distortion sound.
My tchnical roots are classical, later Jazz an Blues, so I am not able to use my left thumb to damp the deeper strings - if I am playing fast licks, my left thumb has to be at the back of the neck.

Lots of words - short question: How can I play fast solos whith "Gary Moore Sound" whithout resonance noise of other strings?????

[madhatter@skool]

Use your right hand palm (kinda the bottom pinkie finger side)to lightly rest on the lower strings, which mutes them when you're not using them. I say lightly, because you want them muted, but you also want to be able to easily & quickly switch strings from high to low and low to high. DON'T use your left hand thumb for muting. Keep it back except if you are using it to fret a note or if you need to have a better grip for bends. Hope this helps.

[merano]

yea, maybe I have to change my right hand. I am used to build a slightly closed fist, now I have to open my hand. Also the angel of my right arm changes whith that way of playing. It feals somehow strange, but I´l giv it a chance.
Anny other suggestions?

[merano]

so, what madhatter@skool said is common sense? No other ideas? Cause I dont feel realy comfortable whith this.

[madhatter@skool]

I didn't mean my post to make it seem like it was common sense to do what I said. I wasn't trying to make you feel bad. If I didn't make you feel bad, cool.

The only other alternative to not using your palm is to get a device called a String Dampener. http://www.angelo.com/html/the_string_dampener.html

I highly reccommend that you don't go this route. Get used to using your palm, so you can play on any guitar, not just one with a string dampener. The only thing I would reccommend the String Damperner for is tapping. If you do A LOT(!!!) of tapping(as in multi-fingers on the right hand), you need one, since you won't be able to proparly mute the strings with your palm. Jennifer Batten and Michael Angelo use one for this purpose.

It may take time to get used to using your palm(almost anything new does), but I think it will be worth it.

[merano]

Hi madhatter@skool, my reply was nothing against you!!! Now, - that I know what to loock at - I can see, that a lot of good guitar players use this technique. But some dont, the play (like me) whith a floating hand - and I wonder how they manage it to get a "clean" sound!
If I use my palm playing whith high gain I have a much cleaner sound and I can play faster licks than before. But after a while, my right shoulder hurts :-(
But however, your advise improved my playing (thx!) but I´d like to know alternatives, thats my intention :-))

[fred]

I used to have a problem with this too. The way I hold my right hand i can not mute the strings below (towards the floor) the one I am picking. For a while I tried to change my right hand position so I could mute all strings with it, kinda like Zakk Wylde picks if you have seen him, but that didnt work for me because I got this pain in my wrist pretty fast. It was also really difficult to pick in that awkward position.

So what I did was to change my left hand technique a bit. Having a more "flat" (so that you dont fret with the tip of the finger) left hand position allows you to mute both the string above and below the one you are playing on. It might take a while to get used to I think, but for me it works really well. And most of the time you only have to mute with your index finger which makes it easier.

[EricV]

Well, to point this out once more... "Floating hand" does NOT mean that your guitar is completely off the bridge at all times. It mainly means that you don´t anchor and keep your hand very relaxed, often slightly gracing the brdge.
How else would you be able to palm-mute at all ?

Avoiding resonance... there are several things that come to mind...

- Gain. How much of it do you use ? Cuz the problem with gain is... it does not only make it easier to do subtle stuff like legato etc., it unfortunately also makes noises stand out way more.
You should be aware that a) a lot of times, players use less gain than you might think... they have a great sound and tone and it might sound very "fat", rich and saturated, but they might not use as much gain as you think b) in the studio, a lot of players actually do mute their strings, i.e. by wrapping a cloth around the neck of the guitar to avoid unwanted noises... check out the bonus material of DT´s "Train Of Thought" CD, the vids from the studio... and I did wrap a bandana around the neck for some of the melodies in my song "Angel", cuz I was getting all kinds of resonating noise when I played that melody with the wang bar

- muting involves both hands... the left hand i.e. mutes the strings you´re not playing ( i often use the lower strings with my thumb when I play melodies along one string ), the right hand does not only mute with the palm, but also with the fingers. Imagine you wanna play a melody on the G-string... you can mute the lower strings with your palm, and the upper ones with the fingers of your right hand ( the ones that are not holding the pick ), kinda making a tunnel around the string you´re playing on.

- Also, the springs of the wangbar or even the strap-pins can generate some extra noise... so you might wanna look into that, trying to mute everything that resonates and is not supposed to.

BTW; I heard that Angus Young, in the studio, cut off all strings but the B-string to record the infamous intro of "Thunderstruck" ;)

Eric