Distortion Noise Discussion Options

[steve25]

Hi, thought i'd open a topic on this as quite a few people seem to have problems with the unwanted noise you get especially when playing high gain. It's most annoying when you're trying to play lead or solos, not so bad with rhythm but can still be quite a bummer if you're like me, when i'm playing rhythm i don't want to just play power chords, i want to throw in a little bit of melody as well.

I know all about the palm muting and left hand muting and stuff but getting that right is hard, my first problem is when i'm palm muting the string above the one im playing i sometimes accidentally mute the string i'm wanting to play as well. Anyone have any advice for how i can improve that. I've not long started to practice muting strings when playing. I mean i've been able to palm mute for ages but not to just cover unwanted noise.

The other thing is, ok lets say i wanted to play power chrods on the E and A string (typical power chords) and then wanted to play a small melody on the A and D strings just to make it sound better. So i'll keep it simple here say i play a power chord of A and then played just 2 notes on the A string and straight after played 2 notes on the D string would i have to mute the 2 E and A string after the power chord, play 2 notes on that string, mute the A string as i went to play on the D or should i just let the chord ring and just palm mute both the A and D strings? Hope that made sense.

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[Kristofer Dahl]

Hey Steve,

Usually when people have a hard time mutings strings - even though they know they muting rules - it's becaus ethey want to speed things up. (just like me when typing - thus the strange spellings)

So if you try playing half the tempo you attempted before - you will probably find it all a lot easier. Now if you all of a sudden start playing perfectly cleanly - wihtout 1000 of hours of slow progress, then i would be angry! O rrather jealous - because I am still working on it!

Now regarding your last question - I am not sure I fully understand. But with higain distortion you rarely want to play more than 2-3 different notes simultaneously (it sounds horrible). Now if you aren't using higain ditortion but softer overdrive - then string noise usually isn't that much of a problem.

Now Steve - go ahead and make you 100 post!

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[steve25]

Hey Steve,

Usually when people have a hard time mutings strings - even though they know they muting rules - it's becaus ethey want to speed things up. (just like me when typing - thus the strange spellings)

So if you try playing half the tempo you attempted before - you will probably find it all a lot easier. Now if you all of a sudden start playing perfectly cleanly - wihtout 1000 of hours of slow progress, then i would be angry! O rrather jealous - because I am still working on it!

Now regarding your last question - I am not sure I fully understand. But with higain distortion you rarely want to play more than 2-3 different notes simultaneously (it sounds horrible). Now if you aren't using higain ditortion but softer overdrive - then string noise usually isn't that much of a problem.

Now Steve - go ahead and make you 100 post!

Thanks Kris, i'll bare that in mind. Whereas Distortion can cover up some of your mistakes it is still hard to play with it'll take time. I like to crank the volume up at times and i obviously notice it when playing leads and stuff that there's a lot of noise potential.

Ok, well let me try to explain a bit better. Let's say, similar i guess to Pavel's rock rhythm and solo stuff where sometimes i see a lot of players will include small leads in their rhythm playing. So a player might play some power chords and add some individual notes in, quite often on the E, A and D strings it seems which makes it sound cool. That's what i'm getting at, if you were to play a power chord and then tried to play a small melody in your rhythm which parts would you have to mute or just palm mute all of it?

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