one of the most important aspects of playing, especially with bass - is muting. I saw these fuggin guys play last week, and their aim was to "put on a show" and jump around and "go crazy." they were absolutely terrible, buncha fuggin noise, I went outside after 2 songs. there was basically no muting at all anywhere unless they actually stopped playing, it was a catastrophe far as I was concerned.

anything that's ringing that should not be is discordant MUD. more egregious a violation on bass imho, because bass is what gives the mix its "weight" - ringing strings on bass are adding a thick layer of discordant mud onto the entire bottom of your mix. and I say mix whether you're live or recorded. by contrast, the folks watching us play last week said goddam, this sounds just like a fully polished CD recording we just listened to

so here's the keys:

pay particular attention to muting the strings above and below where you are playing. whether it is left hand or right hand, use whichever is more appropriate. or even a finger - little tricks like using the fretting finger, to both fret a note and have just a bit of fingerboard overlap so that it mutes the next lower string can work wonders since the fret hand thumb is usually only good for the lowest string.

any guitarist that learns a bit of metal needs to learn how to use the side of his picking hand for palm muting. but this can also be extrapolated when you're not chuggin at the big strings by a slightly abducted motion of the picking wrist for when you are playing smaller strings and need staccato or muting. (on bass , my pinky often performs this function by resting on the string (I was going to say picked, but then I realized for me its almost always fingered, then I laughed like beavis, I said fingered ) when I need staccato notes - pinky isnt quite enough for a full mute so if I need that then the rest of the hand, or the fretting hand, will come into that action.)

also examine the difference between left hand muting at various points - there are times where I need a little bit of mute but I still need the note to ring, so my fret hand mute winds up coming quickly after playing the note, usually middle finger coming down to tap the string - what fret it is near when it does so, depends on what sort of mute I need - so the mute is different at .5, 1, 1.5, 2, but past that, the mute pretty much kills the note.



where on the string to pick or finger also makes a significant different in the timbre of the note - the close to the end (bridge) the note is played, the more overtone string harmonics will be prevalent in the note played; conversely, playing more toward the middle will produce more of the fundamental tone and less of the overtone. this is another area I am more elaborate with on bass - there's riffs I play where the note on the 1 is up past the neck pickup, but other parts of the riff I play at the bridge pickup, to introduce a little more dynamics to the riff.

also with regard to timbre - we know its different as the string gets thicker - but a similar "weight" of timbre becomes evident as you go across the strings - i.e. as the string gets thicker, a move towards the bridge will tighten up the note just a bit and make the timbre just a bit more like the next higher string played more towards the neck. another thing that seems to be more prevalent on bass, especially when I go to the big .125 string, most often I am playing around the bridge pickup on it, because its *so* thick that the fundamental tone comes out too much and not enough overtone as you move toward the neck.