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I’ve been thinking and working on this for a few years now, ever sinse I upgraded to a Martin D-28. The Martin has so much more natural sustain than my previous guitars. There is just so much more sound that, in the beginng, I was really struggeling with keeping it under control. To be clear, I’m not talking about techniques like palm muting, to give perticular effects. I am simply saying that it is sometimes necessary to actively stop the the sound of a note ringing out. Killing a note, of course, can happen automaticly when fretting the next note on the same string, but when the next note falls on a different string, the previous note can continue to ring out muddying the overall sound. It’s this muddiness or lack of it which often seperates the better players. Pianists have peddels to control the mud. Guitarists must use hands and fingers for muting while often simultaneously playing the next note. Compaired to “playing note” lessons there are very few “dampening note” lessons. The topic doesn’t seem very exciting and would probably get little attention on YouTube. It’s also probably a technique that many good players do very well without thinking about it and therefore don’t think about teaching it.
In addition to muddying the overall sound, I find that, when playing with an amp, excessive ringing out of notes on the thinner strings can get the lower, unplucked, strings to start vibrating, eventually leading to feed back issues. This is at its worst just after putting on new strings. Solving feed back problems is a seperate topic, but for me, the root of the problem starts with the fantastic sustain from my Martin.
I would love a lessone from Brian on this topic as well as any comments from others.
Cheers.
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