Unless you have the deity-like guitar powers of Tosin Abasi, modern metal guitar playing is usually defined by high gain settings. This creates a lot of unwanted noise from the strings you aren’t playing as they react to your movements across the fretboard. Whilst there are many YouTube videos out there telling you that fret wraps are the solution to this, relying on them can harm your progress as a guitar player.
Fret wraps are little strips of fabric or elastic with a soft cushion designed to sit on top of your guitar’s nut. There, they essentially ‘palm mute’ and dampen your strings, eliminating buzzes which come as a natural side effect to metal guitar playing. We’ve even seen socks and hair ties used as makeshift fret wraps and, while they do work, they encourage bad habits and techniques.
Fret wraps are tools for guitar players that can’t handle the truth that they’re playing is scrappy.
Before you grab a fret wrap, learn to control your playing. Record yourself playing a series of riffs and licks, and then listen back to the performance. Pay close attention to where the noisier moments happen, and then go back to analyse what your hands were doing in that moment. It’s a repetitive, intricate process, but it the it pays huge dividends.
These tools, which can cost anything from £2-£18, have only been around for around 15 years. Are you telling me that Master of Puppets and Master of Reality are a mesh of overtones and string buzz? Tools like fret wraps are useful, but they should never be relied upon.
In the social media age, everything that's posted online is polished to perfection. So, it's
understandable that guitar players will grab a fret wrap when wanting to clean up, and essentially ‘Photoshop’ their playing. But it's like putting a Peppa Pig plaster on a gaping wound. It might stop a little of the blood flow, but once removed, the original problem still persists.
It’s better to learn where the imperfections of your playing lie, and learn to clean up your playing with hand positioning and technique alone, rather than grabbing the nearest sock to hand.
Getting better has never been easier. Join Modern Metal Academy now and get free lessons on how to mute your strings properly. Our free for life plan comes with over 30 lessons to get you started
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