Playing technique is pretty far out of my areas of expertise, but what the hell
Good muting is about as much an artform as good playing. Of course you can
palm mute, but you have to do it without making noice itself. Slapping and rubbing your palm around on the strings creates lots of noise, so to me
palm muting is very relaxed and just "touching" the strings [that's when I think I'm doing it right because I have a bad habit of digging in, which creats noise]. You also need to mute with the fretting fingers you're not using as much as possible, so you can throw your right hand in the air and pose. Why you always see that index finger laying across the strings as a muting barr behind where you're fretting. And depending on how low your action is the difference of muting as opposed to unwanted fretting of the barr is very small. But all unused fingers can be used for muting. Of course you can mute with the fingers you are fretting with too by how they touch the adjoining strings. Muting techniques need to be part of the way you play so it's not something you think about, you just do it. Unfortunately I keep finding myself having to mute noise, and if I got the noise at all, I wasn't accurately muting to begin with.
