guitars

Just some thoughts from an old hack who played guitar poorly for like 5 years before switching to bass.

It's confusing at first when trying to play a chord because you don't have the range of motion you're used to the a free wrist. Back when I learned I was taught to put the 'knife end' of my hand all the way up against the bridge (make a hand like you're doing a karate chop) and strum from there. Down will be easier than up. Another thing to keep in mind is that all our arms/hands and other appendages are different sizes and what may work for others may not work for you, so try a few styles, see which works best for you and also sounds like how you want, and do that.

And some things are okay to shortcut. I always had trouble on power chords on the bottom three strings so I just kept the root and next string snd skipped the third. No ones really going to notice.

Try using part of your wrist to mute. Sometimes you gotta modify the mute to get the desired effect.

I don't know what kind of guitar you have, but cheaper guitars tend to have crappy tuners. I've noticed it's much harder to keep a guitar in time with a guitar with bad tuners. Is it electric or or acoustic?

Palm muting is probably more common with down stokes, but you can palm mute up strokes as well. Start with alternate picking on a single string. Usually you are palm muting all 6 strings anyway, as it's a technique that is more suited to single strings or power chords.

Strings stretch most when they are new. After the initial stretching, they don't change as much. This is why it's common to manually stretch new strings when you put them on. Depending on the guitar and type of bridge, the tuning of one string can affect the others. For example, if you tune your low E string down, the other strings may go up in pitch as they take up more of the tension.

It really depends on the guitar you have. If you have a floating tremolo you can't do muting as any pressure on the bridge will make the guitar go sharp.

For other types, muting while doing alternate picking is possible. Try something like the Peter Gunn Theme on the low E string for practice.

For the tuning issue, it might be that your tuners are cheap or that the nut is pinching the strings. Try grinding a little graphite from a pencil and rubbing it into the nut slots, it helps with the sticking.