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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