Tips & Techniques
How to silence the strings with your left hand
Lesson #311
Video lesson
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Editor’s notes
Hey friends! Quick lesson here showing you 3 different ways to silence the strings using your fretting (left) hand. This is an valuable technique to use in various circumstances, as sometimes you’ll want to stop/silence/punctuate/mute the ringing strings for percussive reasons – and based on context of what you’re playing, there’s a few different approaches you’ll need to take. I’ll show you 3 such examples (with close-up photos of my hand) on how to do this, and follow them up with a specific song-based exercise (with tabs) to help you practice. Enjoy!
- 0:00 Lesson overview
- 1:24 Method #1 (unpressing your fingers)
- 2:20 Method #2 (rotating your hand forward)
- 3:35 Method #3 (using your left pinky)
- 4:44 Exercise (“Summertime” intro chords)
- 7:15 Farewell & PDF Chord Sheet
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