How do I mute the strings?

So there's two ways to mute strings when you're playing. One is using barre chords, which are harder to play but easier to mute. And the other way is using open chords, which are easier to play, but they're slightly harder to mute because you have to use the palm muting technique, which we'll go over. Make an F chord on your guitar as an example.

If we release the pressure on the chord, we get this muted sound because the strings can't vibrate. Your fingers are just resting very lightly on all these strings, and then when you put pressure on them you can play the chord like normal.

The other way is using open chords and palm muted.

Now obviously with open chords, (let's take G) some of the strings are open. So even if you release pressure on the fingers that you've got, it's only gonna mute those and still play the rest of the chord. So what do we do about that? Well, we need to palm mute with your other hand hand.

So when we're palm muting, you want to lightly strum the chord with your fingers. And on the downward motion, mute them immediately afterwards with your palm. It's kind of hard to do slowly because it'll ring out but that's essentially what you're doing. So you're not coming in at a horizontal and it's not straight down. It's kind of diagonally down with your palm. And how you get a rhythm is on the upstroke, you come up with your thumb. So down, mute with your palm and with your thumb.