The palm mute, also known as palm muting, is a playing technique for the guitar. Palm mutes are executed by putting the left hand (of a right-handed guitarist) lightly across the strings so that they produce a stoccato effect when struck with the right-hand pick. Palm mutes of multiple strings simultaneously are typically strummed to make the desired sound.
While seldom, if ever, encountered in classical music featuring the guitar, palm muting is now a standard technique among guitar players who play with a plectrum ("pick"). Palm muting is so widely used as to be idiomatic in hard rock, heavy metal, and particularly thrash or speed metal, but it is often found in any style of music that features electric guitars with distortion in the signal's pre-amplification stage.
In guitar tablature, palm mutes are rendered with an X when the tonality is not important, and otherwise with the abbreviation PM. Palm mutes are sometimes executed by strumming, so there are often two palm mutes in a beat (one for downstrum, one for upstrum):
One popular song with palm muting is "Santa Monica" by Everclear
Palm mutes in notation
e |--x--x--|
B |--x--x--|
G |--x--x--|
D |--x--x--|
A |--x--x--|
E |--x--x--|
Recorded examples of palm muting
e |------------------x-x-x-x--------------x-x-x-x|
B |------------------x-x-x-x--------------x-x-x-x|
G |------------------x-x-x-x--------------x-x-x-x|
D |------------------x-x-x-x--------------x-x-x-x|
A |-5-5--5-5-5-5-5-5-x-x-x-x--5-5-5-5-5-5-x-x-x-x|
E |-3-3--3-3-0-0-3-3-x-x-x-x--3-3-0-0-3-3-x-x-x-x|
Palm muting can also be heard in The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun", and is employed on both acoustic and electric guitars by Al Di Meola. One example of the technique's use on acoustic guitar may be found in Di Meola's "Mediterranean Sundance".
