[Harp-L] RE: muting notes

[Dan Hazen <bluesmandan76@xxxxxxxxx>]

I play guitar, too, and muting notes is standard fare in guitar playing...
but almost always for rhythm playing, and rarely for lead. The only common
use of muting in lead work that I can think of is a "rake" ending with a
strong note at the end... it would be like a muffled glissando running up
or down the harmonica to end on the target note (pretty common lick for
both guitar and harmonica). Muting's primary use would be for rhythm in
guitar, and I think also for harmonica, as in a Sonny Terry chugging, where
you have a lot of quick little notes/chords happening. You can "mute" by
tongue slapping, or by changing breath direction, or by a quick deep bend
to a choke, or by using the hand wah effect in reverse to close down the
note instead of open it up. If you do any rhythm chugging, you'll need to
use a combination of all these techniques. By the way, playing rhythm on
guitar with various patterns of muted and unmuted sounds is also called
"chugging".