# Djent/purr technique helpful advice



## meambobbo (Mar 6, 2013)

Watching Misha djent away in some of his videos, he's got kind of a strange approach to how he holds his picking hand. So I tried to emulate that a little, and it really opened up that djent sound. You notice whenever he explains the djent sound, he compares it to a common 2-note palm-muted power chord with a mild amount of muting. The djent tone uses 4 notes, which is a big part of the sound; but more importantly he uses a harder amount of muting.

By harder, I don't mean he's pushing down on the strings with his palm harder - he moves his right hand a bit further towards the neck. Everytime I tried to do this, something was a little off. If I used the amount of muting he did, I'd get kind of a droning sound as though I had turned down my tone knob, rather than the super crispy tone he gets. I've even gotten ringing as well, like a natural harmonic was stuck in there and overpowering the rest of the tone.

I've analyzed this, and I'm pretty sure this is what was happening. First of all, I was using the area between my wrist and pinky for my mute. This soft, fleshy area doesn't cut it. I believe it allows too much resonance in the strings. That was definitely part of the ringing described above. My root note would resonate through my palm into the next highest string and force it into a natural harmonic. I know that sounds hard to believe, but I have a soundcloud clip that clearly demonstrates it. I would have to assume that I was also muting much more high end than low end, which created the droning, tone-knob-on-0 sound. And the angle of my palm over the strings wasn't even - I was muting the higher strings more than the lower strings.

The other aspect is the pick attack. I'm coming at the strings on like a 30-45 degree angle, maybe even higher for the higher string as I use my wrist as a fulcrum. So I feel like I'm transferring more energy, more efficiently, to the lower strings than the higher ones. This is in addition to muting the higher strings more than the lower ones as described in the paragraph above. So I wasn't getting the full tone from the highest fifth, and it turns out that note really makes the djent tone.

So positioning my right hand more like Misha, I've got my palm right where it touches my wrist doing all the muting for all 4 strings. My thumb is basically parallel to my lowest string. I'm picking the lowest string with a 0 degree or possibly even negative angle to my pick. I can move the mute further off the bridge and get not much resonance to the mute - it's all attack, and there's no drone to it. This position also forces me to hit all 4 strings with roughly equal force. And they're all muted equally, or if not, the high notes have less mute than the lower - the opposite of the prior situation.

I know many guitarists like to sling their guitars real low which makes this technique impossible - at least for my physical form. It forces you to use the pinky palm area rather than the wrist, and it's harder to get a consistent pick attack angle over 4 strings while holding a mute.

For the purr technique, it's the same thing but a bit more forgiving. You want equal pick attack across the 4 strings and an equal mute. But here you don't want to mute as far off the bridge. In fact I like to mute directly over the saddle - just enough to bleed some high end but not hard enough to kill the notes sustain. I downpick all four notes open and immediately apply the mute. Nice WAHhooooooooo sound.

I know this amount of detail seems like overkill, but it makes a huge difference for me. Maybe I'll make a soundcloud to demonstrate.


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## ausareth (Mar 6, 2013)

Wow, good job dude. I'll try it.


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## zgov (Mar 11, 2013)

Ive seen alot of people talking about the djent technique n the djent sound and alot of it is somewhat right but the main djent sound comes from basically the pop technique on bass... On 1 string not 4 or 3 or 2... Just use your low a and do an open upstroke not palm muted, then a palm muted downstroke and then another open upstroke. On your upstrokes scoop the string from damn near the bottom of the string, you put alot more attack and emphasis on the upstroke than on the palm mute. So its like a buh bubum bubum bubum...that sound of the open upstroke immediately after your palm muted downstroke is what gives the genre its name youll hear it, instead of buh bubum it really sounds like djent d-jent d-jent. Give that a shot. Make some groovy shit with that technique lol


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## meambobbo (Mar 11, 2013)

I'm not going to start arguing about what "djent" is or isn't, but this is specifically what I'm referring to:

(See 3:45)


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## BIG ND SWEATY (Mar 11, 2013)

zgov said:


> Ive seen alot of people talking about the djent technique n the djent sound and alot of it is somewhat right but the main djent sound comes from basically the pop technique on bass... On 1 string not 4 or 3 or 2... Just use your low a and do an open upstroke not palm muted, then a palm muted downstroke and then another open upstroke. On your upstrokes scoop the string from damn near the bottom of the string, you put alot more attack and emphasis on the upstroke than on the palm mute. So its like a buh bubum bubum bubum...that sound of the open upstroke immediately after your palm muted downstroke is what gives the genre its name youll hear it, instead of buh bubum it really sounds like djent d-jent d-jent. Give that a shot. Make some groovy shit with that technique lol



you're describing how they get the bouncy rhythm, like the main riff in rational gaze by meshuggah.

to the OP: you shouldnt really have to change your technique or hold your pick like Misha, it really comes down to how you have everything EQ'd and where you decide to mute the strings at


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## zgov (Mar 11, 2013)

I see what your referring to now thats just sliding your palm up the strings a little farther than usual so you dont let the strings ring out at all and not necessarily pick the fuck outta the strings but give em a good solid strum to get that attack out of it


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## zgov (Mar 11, 2013)

BIG ND SWEATY said:


> you're describing how they get the bouncy rhythm, like the main riff in rational gaze by meshuggah.
> 
> to the OP: you shouldnt really have to change your technique or hold your pick like Misha, it really comes down to how you have everything EQ'd and where you decide to mute the strings at



Yes exactly


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## meambobbo (Mar 11, 2013)

BIG ND SWEATY said:


> you shouldnt really have to change your technique or hold your pick like Misha, it really comes down to how you have everything EQ'd and where you decide to mute the strings at


 
I agree that you need the right EQ from the get-go to get the sound at all. But this goes beyond that. Even with the "right" EQ, there's a huge difference in tone.

for some people they may not have to change their technique. but I definitely do. I will have to provide a clip to show you the difference it makes for me. I get my 8 string back tonight.


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## meambobbo (Mar 11, 2013)

And zgov, the accented upstroke technique does make a big difference in tone as well - it's good to point out, and I wasn't trying to poo poo what you were saying, just distinguish it from the point I was making.

Misha covers that in one of those Djent Set videos talking about part of Letter Experiment. It's particularly effective on 7 and 8 strings. I know Black Sabbath liked to use lots of downstrokes to get a thicker, darker tone, and Metallica used sequential downstrokes for fast palm mutes to get a punchier, machine-gun type sound where each stroke sounds the same so it sounds like there's more notes going on, rather than the chug-ah-chug-ah-chug-ah train-like sound of alternate picking. The upstroke technique seems to be slightly brighter and often you have more pick strength, so you get a stronger accent, and the brightness works as a good contrast, and on 7/8 strings it's not so bright as to be thought of as "thin".


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## zgov (Mar 11, 2013)

meambobbo said:


> And zgov, the accented upstroke technique does make a big difference in tone as well - it's good to point out, and I wasn't trying to poo poo what you were saying, just distinguish it from the point I was making.
> 
> Misha covers that in one of those Djent Set videos talking about part of Letter Experiment. It's particularly effective on 7 and 8 strings. I know Black Sabbath liked to use lots of downstrokes to get a thicker, darker tone, and Metallica used sequential downstrokes for fast palm mutes to get a punchier, machine-gun type sound where each stroke sounds the same so it sounds like there's more notes going on, rather than the chug-ah-chug-ah-chug-ah train-like sound of alternate picking. The upstroke technique seems to be slightly brighter and often you have more pick strength, so you get a stronger accent, and the brightness works as a good contrast, and on 7/8 strings it's not so bright as to be thought of as "thin".



Oh your good man I didnt take it like that n ya ive seen those videos before im a big misha mansoor fan he is definitely a genius but I lean more towards marc okubo's style personally

Marc Okubo - Veil of Maya: GuitarMessenger.com Masterclass 1 of 2 - YouTube check that out man, good stuff


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