One way of playing muted chords or muted strings, is by simply covering all of the strings using our marking hand (in most cases the left hand). We would get this effect by gently covering the strings but not press them enough to mark the frets and play the notes. This is a rather elementary way of doing this, but here we are going to review a technique which involves muting individual strings using the playing hand without covering the strings on the fretboard. Prior to viewing the video below, note that playing this technique requires crossing the thumb and the index finger forming a V shape.
Muted Finger Picking Demonstration
The strings are only played with the index finger and the thumb. The trick is, once you play the string with the thumb, you mute the string immediately with the index finger. If you play the string with the index finger, then you mute the string with the thumb. It takes some practice, but the overall effect is that you can start to conduct some finger picking and mute some of the strings. This creates a silencing effect which can be added to the pieces you play. Silences can be considered as an effect or an accent which we make use of to enrich our music.
