PlayStation
Expression

Muting and Sustaining

The left trigger is your palm

The left trigger L2 is a palm laid across the strings. It's continuous: how far you pull is how firmly the palm rests.

  • A partial pull mutes. Ringing strings duck and shorten - strum against a half-pull and you get the tight, chugged rhythm sound.
  • A full pull chokes. Everything ringing is damped to silence, as hard as the instrument can damp.
  • Release reopens. Let the trigger go and strings you haven't killed come back to fading naturally. The squeeze only ever drains - release never adds anything back.

You can play through it in both directions: choke a chord and release the trigger as a gesture of its own, or ride a light squeeze the whole song for a shorter, drier instrument.

The response

How the pull maps to damping is the Squeeze response curve in the Instrument Settings panel - bend it so the first half of the travel does almost nothing, or almost everything. It's licensed, as is Squeeze direction, which turns the trigger around entirely:

  • Mute (the default): at rest the strings ring naturally; pulling damps them.
  • Sustain: at rest the strings sit damped, and pulling opens them toward their natural ring - the instrument is dry until you lean in.

One trigger, one palm; which way it works is yours to choose.

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