Your Bass Muting Technique Sounds Like S**t (How to Fix It)

What muting technique are you struggling with the most? 👍👆✋🎸
*Timestamps for this lesson:*
1:00 - What Is Bass Muting?
1:16 - Sympathetic Vibration Can Destroy You
2:13 - Muting Fix #1: The Thumb Mute
2:42 - Fix #2: The Pull Across
3:43 - Fix #3: The Sneaky Finger
4:05 - “You Give Love A Bad Name” Tutorial
4:40 - “Bad Name” Muting Walkthrough
5:41 - Fretting Hand Muting is Hard
6:01 - Fix #4: The String Sitter
6:59 - Fix #5: The Flat Hand
7:43 - “Bad Name” Muting Revisited
8:56 - The Big Bass Muting Test
9:57 - “Bad Name” Play-along

still can't believe this kind of energy and enthusiasm in a lesson is free...

This lesson is an absolute gem for beginners. Don't underestimate it! So many people on Clip-Share posting videos how they play their favorite songs' covers, when in fact they play it shitty (even after years of practice).
I am not a Bon Jovi fan, but the track is a perfect choice for the exercise.
And one more advice for beginners. If you think, that you play the exercise good enough, try to play with a metronome (you will definitely find something to improve) .
Thank you, Josh! (planning to order your online course, 'cause your efforts worth the support).

I started playing bass literally 12 days ago and you’ve helped me so much

I lost my index, middle and ring finger on my left hand at a long time ago.
So when I started to play the bass, I had to modify my bass for lefty, put a 2kg weight to make a preferred body balance to play, and then pluck the strings with my thumb mainly.
I cannot even say that I can play the bass yet, but the tips on this channel really help me.
Thank you so much.
I will advance with your help.

I told my bassist about your channel. I can tell he not watching.

Josh, such a valuable lesson and all about what not to let ring. Your technique advice is outstanding and your humor is just a touch below that but still fun and keeps it interesting for us noobs. Thank you again for posting all that you do!

I started playing bass little over a month now. I have learnt amazing techniques from each and every video of yours. Your exercises are great and fun to learn. I always wanted to see a video of eliminating the unwanted sounds - Thanks this helps a lot :)

This channel has too little subscribers for it's content. Your videos are really helpful, keep up with that great content :)

Please keep making these, I love these videos so much. Your communication is so bright and engaging, easy to follow but not condescending or baby talky. I NEED these keep it up!!

This is one of the most helpful videos on your channel! I learned bad technique years ago and now trying to unlearn it lol … after just watching I’m struggling with accidentally hitting strings when I’m trying to mute but already understand more and see improvement. Thank you!!

I started playing bass this year, and these videos are the most illuminating and helpful I've found. Thank you for your work.

I’ve been wanting to learn bass for well over a decade and I finally made a 365 practice commitment. I found your channel about a week into it and here I am 2 months later still at it. Your tutorials give me the instruction and motivation I need to keep going. I love your attitude and your explanations are so clear. Thanks for being a great teacher!

Yay new video! I just finished the bass to badass course and it's AMAZING the difference it made. Thank you for making this instrument so accessible and unintimidating!!

When you do parody versions of songs it's incredibly entertaining. You're like the Weird Al of bass!

Your videos are great, love your approach to not just the teaching itself, but the editing and even the "branding" (e.g. the orange theme). A great model for what I'd like my own teaching channel to be like eventually!

Glad to see that I developed all of these by myself in the last decades, so I haven't missed any. Thanks for putting them together. Now my new 5-strings require me to re-think my approach and be more mindful of moving my muting fingers (ring and pinky) further up than I used to need to. Now 5 strings are still doable, but I think it puts me off 6-string basses for life - one more string than I have fingers to mute. Also, if I want high notes, I use a mandolin, dammit! 😋😉

Man I just started playing bass and I excited to learn. But I'm glad that this video is here because I can progress to being a better bassist. Keep up the awesome work!

You do a phenomenal job of making this fun, Josh. Please keep these great videos rolling

Amazing lesson! I didn't realize how important these small (yet HUGE) details are. But I'll work to improve my sound.
Many thanks!

Josh at first I was a mess with rumbling strings , the mute secrets came with time , not to mention the flying little finger , very good video kind sir.

Adding on to the pull across: it is very important to learn the pull across muting technique because certain songs such as teen town (weather report) require that you anchor off the e string for the first part of the phrase (unless you use a floating thumb technique).

Just starting bass after playing guitar and while my fretting is pretty good my plucking hand was learning from scratch. You are helping my journey bro.

Been playing bass for a little more than a year, i thought that my muting techniques were pretty decent but actually there's plenty of room for improvement, thank you for the video :)

Probably one of the best bass focused channel on yt! Thank you for all these awesome lessons :)

Honestly this is such a great tutorial, once I've been playing with an amp I thought there was something wrong with my guitar cause my other cheap ass bass guitar didn't make those ringing sounds and stuff. Thanks for the great help!

Great video! Could you talk about how to pick up faster songs and the gist of speeding up with harder techniques?

Hi! here Val, from Santiago, Chile. I just wanted to tell you that I started to learn bass a couple of months ago (at 39 yo...I know!) and your videos are BRILLIANT. As an amateur guitar and ukelele player that mostly play with chords, my plucking sucks, and your videos had helped my HEAPS. Thank you so much for the content. Also, you are hilarious.

Wow. I was doing the "string-sitter" technique all along. I always try to be aware of how long a note is ringing out because it sets the mood of what I'm playing.
Coincidently, I let my little sister noodle on my bass for the first time and she did the same thing. I didn't tell her to mute any strings, but she just did it anyway. She's a natural

Im a really new bassist / music instrument player and this is the kind of technique i've been searching for. I've been doing the thumb, pull across and the flat hand most of the time. This video really help me a lot. thanks.

Hey man. I really like your videos and like the info and the way you deliver it. Comedy is definitely the best way to learn. I am an intermediate player and would like a bit of content based around that skill level in the way of exercises and drills. The most helpful video for me was where you broke down an exercise into 5 levels. If you could do more of them that would be awesome. Cheers

Great lesson. The muting test at the end 9:00 was a revelation for me. It explained a lot and reinforces the technique.
I like this style of lesson. Reminds me of a PBS show.

Learning the basics needs a good teacher that explains the basics correctly. You do that!! Bless your soul for helping so many of us.

Thanks for this video! I was just thinking about how I needed muting help. Your videos are always so helpful and encouraging! :)

Great video.. love the work you're doing.. much appreciated 🙏.. so many would love to pay for the course but can't afford to.. these videos are a great help... 👍

THANK YOU for explaining why I felt like I was going crazy. I KNEW I didn’t touch those strings and they were still vibrating, leading me to be confused why it was happening.

This is a good video because it goes into more detail on muting than most videos ("jUsT mOvE yOuR rIgHt HaNd AnD lEfT hAnD dOwN aT tHe SaMe TiMe"), *_BUT,_* like most videos, you missed an *_extremely important_* muting tip: plucking hand thumb placement. Let's say I'm trying to play an old school R&B song. I decided to pluck the strings somewhere close to the neck for that classic fat sound. I'm going my merry way, but I quickly notice a faint ringing sound coming from the strings _underneath my plucking hand's thumb._ I'm doing _everything_ Josh said, yet it's as if the laws of physics just don't work properly for me! Fortunately, the weird muting problems aren't actually caused by a glitch in real life: This strange phenomenon is just caused by my thumb touching a harmonic node (or whatever you music geeks call it). Fixing this issue is simple: I just need to move my plucking hand closer to either the neck or the bridge until there's no more faint, high-pitched ringing coming from the strings my thumb is muting. But since where you pluck also changes your tone, I'll have to try moving my plucking hand both ways to find a spot with a good tone and no annoying "thumb harmonics." So I try moving even closer to the neck--- sounds a little too fat for me. What if I try moving slightly away from the neck? ...That sounds pretty good! Not too fat, not too tight! And no more rebellious singing coming from underneath my thumb! Note: Remember that, while I decided to avoid going very close to the neck, you might like the sound of playing very close, or even on top of, the neck. How you shape your tone is entirely up to you.
This tip both saved my sanity and improved my tone. Also, I find that moving to avoid "thumb harmonics" usually gives me a better tone as a byproduct.

Thank you, this was fantastic! I'm a beginner and found this very helpful. Especially the breakdown of which muting strategy to use with which note in the Bon Jovi song.

Great channel. Very entertaining lessons. You're a fine player and an even finer teacher. Congratulations and more power to your elbow.

Josh (as usual) gives me the right information, stuff I can understand and use, when all the videos by other channels just have a load of waffle in them.

I use 1 or 2 techniques naturally learned (for instance thumb on lower string than the one currently played -glad I practice it, it's so important-), all others I've learnt from your video, 👉Thank you ! 🎸👍🎸

Such great stuff Josh. I believe my muting skills are decent, but I will check my technique for sure.

This is just what I needed. Been having trouble with buzzing and ringing. You the man Josh!

Absolutely brilliant lesson, thanks a lot. I began playing the bass a month ago now and this helped me tremendously.

So... I play a six string bass and muting is so key. I have found the floating thumb technique (the thumb isn't anchored and "floats" over the lower strings) so helpful as well as the flat hand technique.

Just finished Josh’s Beginner to Badass paid course. Worth every penny. Sorely wishing he had a part two I could jump into right now!

Super entertaining!
This video was perfect in teaching all the bass muting techniques. Thank you!

Thank you very much! I've been getting frustrated by my strings ringing at every move. I'm only beginning, coming from cello so I'm not used to it at all. It's going to be very useful for me

Electric bass guitar was my first instrument and I actually pretty smoothly learned both left and right hand muting, therefore I can confidently say I can play bass "correctly". However It's the regular guitar that ended up being my main instrument and my experience with muting was very helpful during learning guitar

It was so hard to play some of the things without the muting xD once you get into the habit of muting, you will be set for life. What would be another good video on the topic of muting would be how to mute strings while playing slap because that is something I am having trouble with.

That was pretty cool. I didn't know the pull across and I always used my thumb. I guess it's time to practice that. The plucking sounds different because I can (and have to) dig a lot more. I like it ^^.

Muting techniques are pretty easy when it comes to fast songs like paranoid, but with solos like my friend of misery on bass is pretty difficult to get a nice sound out of without getting noisy vibration, thanks for the advice.

Been loving your videos lately! Keep them coming! :D

an easy right hand technique for me is to have the thumb resting on top of the strings you aren't playing but never actually rooting it to one position. this way you can mute any string, even the D or G, with your thumb with ease. not only that but because your thumb isn't planted, it's much easier to move to different areas of the bass for plucking

Hey! i got my first bass three days ago, and im feeling so lucky that i came across this channel. you rock dude! thank you so much!

I'm glad I watched this video because I incorporated all of these techniques by myself through the course of a loooong time. It's reaffirming to me.
But I'm also glad kids (I'm so old that I quarreled with my high school pals over this topic: if Nirvana's Unplugged was going to be great or a failure [I won, that was awesome]) now can access to this PRACTICAL musical education for free, provided by great (and funny) teachers like you.

🤣🤣🤣 The ending had me in stitches.
Just started playing a few days ago and your channel has been great help. One of the things im struggling with is to get my index finger nail to not grab string, I've cut as short as I can and it still gets the string sometime.

Thanks for the vid, I've been struggling against this problem since I got my first bass lol
Keep the good work! 👍

Thanks for this video! I'm new to playing bass and have a lot of trouble trying to keep my strings muted. I naturally hold my fingers quite flat when fretting, so it's easier for me to mute the higher-note strings that way, while using the floating thumb when I need to shift down to play those higher notes. IDK if it's my amp or not, but when I've turned the amp on and I'm just holding the bass (or have just put it down), I get a constant ring from the G string. Unless I specifically mute it, the ring gets louder.

I have a bit of an odd situation with how I mute my strings. For reference, I have been playing bass for roughly 2 years as of writing this, and have received only a small amount of professional teaching, probably around 25 total hours. Anyway, I do what is essentially the thumb muting and fretting hand muting, but with one major difference - instead of my plucking hand's thumb, I use my ring finger, and completely anchor my thumb on the pickups. It seems to work fine for me, and feels very natural, whereas moving my thumb so much feels forced and uncomfortable. I know that's the first step to being comfortable with it, but still. I have no idea where I picked that habit up, if anywhere, and I've never heard anyone else talk about it. It doesn't cause me any pain, and as far as I can tell, it successfully mutes the A and E strings while not hindering my actual plucking in any way. Is there any actual downside to muting this way that should be cause to kick the habit? Or is it one of those "as long as it works" kinda things?

This is great! I have picked up a Bass a few months ago after starting to learn 20 years ago! Now im at the stage where I think im doing so well when I can play something like Black Eye Peas, Lets get it started but when I crank the amp up I realise my muting is shite lol Its hard to not just want to learn songs and to avoid practising this stuff!

glad this channel is getting the attention it deserves

Awesome!! This is another great one!!
I’m improving a lot with these videos...!! Thanks josh!!

My muting technique consists of resting the side of my picking hand on the strings while using a pseudo-Travis style (watch Sting). I also use a closed grip with my fretting hand (this is also one reason why I like 5 strings so much, but I won't go into that here). Playing open a lot like Geddy Lee is fun, but it is a noise nightmare especially when using round wound strings with bright high end. Flat wound strings or turning down my bass tone knob altogether mixed with a double-handed mute gives me thump with little-to-no string noise.

Thank you so much! Your videos are so helpful!

Hey Josh. I figured out a technique that works fine for me. I push my resting thumb under the E-string to mute my E and A strings so I can play both strings muted. It is not necessarily my way to prevent unwanted strings from buzzing but a good technique to sound "funky" with some muted tones. Is this something "legit" or my crazy invention about to revolutionize the world of bass playing :)

I can't thank you enough for sharing this :)

Hey I love your videos ! They are great ! I’ve been struggling with this in bass tho . I see People play open strings Sometimes and then put Their fingers under it to mute , then Other Times they don’t do it it all ! Very confusing . I was wondering if you could tell me when to and when not to mute other strings ! Thanks a bunch love the channel

Bass muting really just became an issue when I switched to 5-String. The low B is a real sucker when you playing the higher strings and resting your thumb on the E-String. I play 5.String for maybe half a year now exclusively (because to me it makes the most sense) but I still haven't nailed a proper muting technique for that. On 4-string I never had any issues.

5 minutes in learning the practice bass lines when I realized .... this guy has my exact bass! I love it. Subscribed

Actually, I play guitar but I absolutely love your teaching approach! Probably you can recommend some courses for guitarists?🙂 Or maybe you can teach guitar as well?))

My book said something about a “tip” that this was where it was good to start practicing muting. As a self-teaching newbie I rely on the book, so I was flipping back and forth, and they don’t even mention anything about muting techniques! But I’m glad you’ve posted one!

Vibrations can be sympathetic?! A lot of people can't even do that!!

LOL! Love the Weird Al Bass version in the end....seriously thanks, am starting out, never thought muting those damn misbehaving strings would be such a problem...I really want to develop the habit of playing cleanly, even if it's just simple quarter notes...this helps!

I’m feeling a bit burned out when practicing bass because of this exact reason. Thanks josh (:

I have a 5string so muting is a problem for me, this video helped a ton but I found a thing where you put your fretting hands just a little closer to the a string to mute it when I’m playing high strings. It helps get everything muted

Another great lesson, thanks!

That outro was awesome 😁 Another great lesson as well Josh.

Hii
I've been looking to learn how to make a muted triplet using index, middle finger poping and then thumb
I pretty much do it but can't get the speed
Anyways would be really great if you could do a video about muted triplets.. they're sooo awsome to hear

Great video thanks for the help believe me I need all I can get 😎 I don't want give bass a bad name 😵

....you give bass a bad name...Love it!! I'm guilty of pulling my fingers off the string in certain situations, I knew the problem, but not how to correct. Seems like an intuitive thing to just keep the finger on the string, but just didn't click for me. Thanks for the tip and thank you very much for the entertaining and informative video!!! Keep em coming!!

Like other BassBuzz videos, this one is essential for noobs. Thanks for posting.

You should also have covered the picking hand muting. I mute all the lower strings with my palm, similar way to how guitarists do

Hi! I have a problem with the string sitter technique. I can fret a note and lift my finger so that it rests on the string afterwards. But between these two stages the string tends to rattle against the fret. This happens especially with the lower strings. Any tips on how to eliminate this? I have been thinking that maybe I'm not lifting the finger quickly enough?

It's not only bass muting technique. It's the base muting technique! Thanx!

#6 tips: use palm muting when using pick. Metal bassists often use that technique

wow you just helped me so much, I was wondering if something was wrong with my bass

Dam flat hand is superior tip, especially for music school-graduated guitarists, thank you so much! Playing got so much clearer

>Play highly technical riff: Impeccable muting
>play 4 whole notes in sequence: the ringing of the bells of all the churches in england resonate upon all of mine strings...

Your videos are so a-muting! Thank you so much!

I dont use an amp while practicing, so i just notice this is really important. Thnx josh

Been trying to learn bombtrack by ragtm and this helped so much wit the e string ringing on the main riff. Thank you so much!

I really like the fact that these videos are entertaining to watch later when needed.

I do nearly all of my string muting with my fretting hand. Just something I've learned playing 5 and 6 string basses.

Dude your videos help me out so much thank you

thanks for this! My muting technique is so bad, I can somehow play two notes on the same string

this is the video i've been looking for, finally! thank you.

This so super helpful!!! Thank you!

i just started playing more learning and i absolutely love your humor with this attitude learning an instrument makes so much more fun!
Thankyou!

Awesome as always!
I've got 1 quick question: would you recommend the Ibanez SR300E as a beginner bass?
I watched your whole series on beginner basses, but it seems that the top recommendations are either sold out everywhere or twice as expensive.
Thank you!