[jabyrd]

Hi all, I've recently started playing the harp guitar, and am wondering how others manage muting the sub-bass strings. Of course, if you have several ringing at once it's going to sound like mud, and you're limited to your plucking hand with which to mute the strings.

If I'm only plucking the bass strings infrequently (slow tempo, chords that stretch over many bars), then I find you I often get away with not paying much attention to muting, as they die down enough before you need the next one.

Also if I'm playing something more Michael Hedges/Andy McKee style, were the left hand is doing some legato ostinato sort of thing, and I have my entire right hand for the bass strings, then it's not much of an issue since I have 5 fingers to manage the strings.

But if I want to play lots of shorter bass notes on different strings, I have to mute the previous ones appropriately. For a descending bass line, this is pretty easy, because you can just use rest strokes, but what do you do otherwise?

Do you mute strings with your thumb right before/after the next note? This is what I initially tried, but it doesn't work so well if the bassline is quick (such as quarter notes), and can require moving your thumb a lot. Changing the how stretched out your hand is so much/fast can also make it hard to keep your fingers on the right guitar strings (although maybe I'll just get better at this as I practice).

Do you mute them with your palm/wrist/heel of your hand? This works pretty well if I want to mute all the strings at once. It feels tricky (but I think doable) if the string I want to mute is right next to the one I want to ring. It also feels a little more tricky if I want to mute a higher pitch string while letting a lower pitch one ring. This still doesn't work to well for quick basslines as you have to sort of bounce your wrist with your thumb which makes it really difficult to play the guitar strings with your fingers.

If the bassline is ascending, maybe you could mute them with the top of your thumb immediately before the next one? Or play a sort of upwards rest stroke?

I'm curious how others manage this. Do you primarily use one technique, or are there a couple you switch between? Do you use one of the methods I mentioned or something else?