String damping

[slidemad]

Hello pickers and sliders.

I often have problems with unwanted notes, particularly when raising a finger from the fretboard and the string continues to quietly ring.

Any tips?

Damp with the fretting hand or the picking hand?

Thanks.

[blueshome]

It depends on where you hands/fingers are as to which is best. Without seeing you play it's difficult to recommend anything specific.

Learn both techniques and see which works best for you. You'll end up using damping a lot to control your sound, it's as much a part of playing as fretting or picking.

[slide496]

I play on slide and piedmont woodbody parlors right now. Techniques might be different on electrics, resonators.

Depends on the noise with the slide, I shift angle of the guitar, sometimes damp both hands. Techniques I use are finger behind the slide, palm damping on the bass with picking hand, resting finger on unplayed string with picking hand. Its never one thing fixed., just something I try to keep on top of and sometimes no damping.

Having an array of techniques has helped clean up the playing some.

Peace,
Harriet

[pete1951]

For me its both.On a resonator guitar its hard to palm-mute, so my picking hand fingers and mainly my thumb do a lot of damping, I`ll often drop back onto the bass strings and use the edge of my thumb to mute if I do a run up the strings. With a slide, the slide hand has to damp behind the slide if you want a clean tone.
If I play electric (BB king style) ,then my picking hand becomes a sort of tunnel , muting the strings I`m not playing.
It maybe you are taking your finger of the sting too quickly? so that it is almost a `pull-off`. If taken off more slowly , the string will be muted in the micro-second between it leaving the fret, and your finger leaving the string?
PT