Raking Technique Options

[mahaffeymg]

I was checking out your SRV lesson and you touched on raking. When you are playing the walking line and raking, are you raking multiple strings or just the one? Also, I was listening to "They Call Me Guitar Hurricane" and it sounded like his raking was pitched. Do the pitches matter, or is it just an effect?

Thanks!,

Mike

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[Muris Varajic]

It more like technique,not effect in my opinion.
Point is to hit as many string as possible which means you have to be really good with left hand muting.
Usually players rake over 3 or 4 strings,optional 5.
Not sure about pitch/intonation,it should be the same.
It MIGHT go just bit higher IF you hit string REALLY HARD
but changing pitch isn't real purpose of raking.

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[BedroomBozo]

I'm new to raking too, and I just started work on your SRV lesson also. When I rake, I have been using my pinky to mute. It seems to work best for that first walking riff (I haven't gotten any farther yet). My problem is, the notes that I'm actually playing seem to come out sort of weak. I tried using a different tone and it helps, but I don't get that same aggression that I get when actually concentrating on digging in one one string.

Maybe just raking two or three extra strings instead of raking all of them with a strumming motion would help? I appreciate your input, dude. If you could give more detail on how to mute the strings or some exercises to help with it.

Thanks.

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[Muris Varajic]

Yeah, muting is most important to get good racking.
You can stick to 2-3 strings racking if you wish
but I would advise you to try with more strings
and here are few tips.
First of all, your tone must be dialed for raking.
This mean not too much gain,
it should be something between clean and overdriven tone,
just listen to SRV's records and you'll no what it is,
he never played on much gain and that is what
helps a lot to avoid to noise when doing racking.
Action of strings is also something you should have in mind,
too low action will produce much more noise
so I would go for some regular action
or maybe higher, this depends on you.

And now few words about muting.
This is pretty much matter of feel
and after a while your hand will remember sweet spot.
I'm not sure if you use your thumb a lot
but thumb comes very useful for muting when you do racking.
Per example, you wanna play on G string with index finger.
Index finger can mute D string by slightly touching it with the tip
and also it can mute B and high E strings, so you have 4 strings raking right now.
Now just apply thumb to low E and A and you have 6 strings racking!
This is probably hard to do if you haven't used thumb before
cause it's not fretting the strings, more like touching them
enough to mute but not hard enough to make the sound of real note.

I hope this helps a bit, let me know if you need more help.

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[BedroomBozo]

Yeah, muting is most important to get good racking.
You can stick to 2-3 strings racking if you wish
but I would advise you to try with more strings
and here are few tips.
First of all, your tone must be dialed for raking.
This mean not too much gain,
it should be something between clean and overdriven tone,
just listen to SRV's records and you'll no what it is,
he never played on much gain and that is what
helps a lot to avoid to noise when doing racking.
Action of strings is also something you should have in mind,
too low action will produce much more noise
so I would go for some regular action
or maybe higher, this depends on you.

And now few words about muting.
This is pretty much matter of feel
and after a while your hand will remember sweet spot.
I'm not sure if you use your thumb a lot
but thumb comes very useful for muting when you do racking.
Per example, you wanna play on G string with index finger.
Index finger can mute D string by slightly touching it with the tip
and also it can mute B and high E strings, so you have 4 strings raking right now.
Now just apply thumb to low E and A and you have 6 strings racking!
This is probably hard to do if you haven't used thumb before
cause it's not fretting the strings, more like touching them
enough to mute but not hard enough to make the sound of real note.

I hope this helps a bit, let me know if you need more help.

Ok I will work on the tone and maybe try out the thumb too. I did notice that my fingers were starting to naturally mute the strings without any "aiming" I was wondering why you had your thumb wrapped so far around the neck..... I was like "Does Muris really have that bad of left hand technique?" LOL

Thanks again for the help. I will work on it some more next week. Tomorrow is SUPER BOWL!!

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[Muris Varajic]

Ok I will work on the tone and maybe try out the thumb too. I did notice that my fingers were starting to naturally mute the strings without any "aiming" I was wondering why you had your thumb wrapped so far around the neck..... I was like "Does Muris really have that bad of left hand technique?" LOL

Thanks again for the help. I will work on it some more next week. Tomorrow is SUPER BOWL!!

Thumb is very useful and there's nothing wrong with using it,
on contrary,it would be wrong avoiding it!

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