Why your Guitar Playing Sounds Messy

A simple yet fundamental aspect of technique. When playing any note or collection of notes on the guitar, you are also deliberately trying not to play notes that you don’t want to play, such as accidental open strings or catching un-intended notes on string transitions etc. 

Muting can be approached in both hands. The fretting hand index finger has a lot of power here, The tip of the index finger can slightly mute the string above it, for example, if playing the 5th fret A string, the tip of the index can slightly snug up to the low E string. The underside of the index finger can also keep a light contact with the D, G, B and even E string. You can test your muting this way by holding that 5th fret A string and then strumming through all six strings, see if you mainly only hear that 5th fret A string note. This takes getting used to, but if you keep it with you within everything you practice you’ll find it starts to become natural. 

The picking hand also can do a similar thing to help aid with muting. The side of the thumb and the pad of the lower thumb joint can mute the lower pitch strings, whilst you can also gently touch the higher strings your not playing.  Experiment with various combinations, different playing situations will call for different things. Certain techniques can have their own muting challenges, so keep these fundamental fretting and picking hand ideas in mind. 

Ensuring that you’re playing notes in time may seem obvious, but the timing between the left and the right hand are key to clean playing. Practicing to drum loops, metronomes and being aware of sub-divisions (rhythms) that you’re playing help neaten this up. Your faster runs will sound cleaner and technical stuff will come together quicker if you spend time practicing slowly with the rhythm in your awareness. 

There are some simple things you can do to work on timing. Practice scales or strumming with certain sub-divisions with a metronome. 8th notes (2 notes per beat) can be counted “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and” these can be linked to “down up down up down up down up” with the picking hand. See if you can play through a scale or keep a rhythm going with that simple sub-division and keep it even, not rushing nor lagging behind. Try this with other rhythms as well such as 16th notes or Triplet 8th notes. Search for Rhythm Exercises at LickLibrary.com! 

If you’re using too much gain, the guitar becomes super sensitive and not only will small movements become exaggerated, but all the dynamic range gets squished up leading to a muddy sound. It may ‘feel’ easier to play, but if you haven’t spent time on Muting and Timing, no amount of gain is going to help us nail those awesome speed runs.  

Same goes for things like Reverb, Delay and Modulation. Unless your playing a shoegaze/The – Edge (U2) style ambient part, or creating a certain atmosphere. These FX if used too heavily only work against our playing sounding punchy and defined. It can be quite revealing to play without these FX, but I recommend practicing things with less or no FX at all to really hear the sound you are producing with your hands – this can be brutal, but it’s the quickest way to clean up your playing. You’ll naturally find ways of really playing into the guitar that help you produce a great sound and control what you are playing.
 

Whilst not really “messy” – bad tuning, bad intonation on bends, vibrato or even pressing to hard on the fretboard when playing a note can make things sound a bit seasick. This is something I’ve struggled with for years. Keeping a light touch on the fretboard and practicing bending exercises have helped me get the physical aspects in control but ultimately this comes down to listening to how you sound in relation to the music. If intonation/tuning is sloppy on top of bad muting/too much FX and poor timing, it becomes like a bad icing on an awful cake. Listen to your playing, don’t judge or get down about it, just listen and make the changes! (note to self here!)