Learn to play All The Small Things by Blink-182 on JustinGuitar!
View the full lesson at All The Small Things by Blink-182 | JustinGuitar
Hi everyone, I hope you are all well.
I have been baking my head with All the small things by Blink 182 since February and I just can not seem to get it quite right. Is anyone here who has managed to nail this beast that can advise. (Forgive my shocking explanation skills)
I understand it to be not palm muted for the intro with the g and f split measure played 1 strum on g then &2&3 are muted hits and the f is played on &4&.
The verse is all palm mute with the c5 that lands on “say it aint so” is held for 4 bars and picked back up again when the "na, na na starts. Which repeats at the second verse also.
I follow Justins advice and turned the gain right up added some trebble and base and turned down the mid.
I dont understand whats happening everthing just seems to bleed into one note and not flow the same. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated I will be super grateful, I hate giving up on things but I think I have struggled to get this one under my fingers for so long I have myself convinced its not achievable.
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Hi Nikki,
I play a lot of power chord based music and while I’ve only briefly messed around with this specific song, based on your description of what’s going on, I do have a couple things you can try.
The first is to really make sure you have your general muting technique down. Power chords will sound really muddy if you are not properly muting the strings you aren’t using. Turn your gain down and practice strumming each chord to make sure you aren’t accidentally playing the strings that aren’t supposed to be there. Once you are good with that- try playing the song again and see how it goes.
This tells me that you may possibly have your gain up too high. Playing with high gain is super fun- but also very noisy and your muting really needs to be on point in order for the song to sound the way it should. I would mess with the amount of gain you are using and see if that helps any.
If you are able to, it would be helpful to see a video of you playing it to see if we can help you with anything else we can see. I understand if that’s not something you want to do though.
Hope this at least gives you something to try!
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Hi Nikki,
I just started learning power chords, and like you I recently started to practice this song, and I like it very much and therefore your request peaked my interest. I’m far from being perfect, and I’m not sure if I can help, but at least I would like to ask a few questions, so that I can understand with what details you are struggeling. When you say you follwo Justin’s advice, you mean you follow this song lesson?
With this song there are different kinds of string muting techniques involved.
- The strings that you mute with the fretting hand when you play a single power chord. E.g. with the C chord we obviously mute the thickest string and the two thinnest strings. From your description I assume that is not your problem area, but can you confirm or deny. I agree with Jennifer though that reducing or removing the gain reveils imprecisions with our playing. I even sometimes play the song on an acoustic to make sure only the proper strings ring out.
- Palm muting technique with your picking hand. Justin has a lesson about that here: https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/palm-muting-bg-1203, which you probably know. This technique is used to lightly mute all the strings with the palm of the hand. The chords still lightly ring out though, they are not dead.
- Third, a full mute of all six stings which happens, as you rightly describe, in the intro. The intro starts with a full bar (palm muted) of C, F, G. The last bar, as you say it starts with the g chord: 1 down strum lightly/palm muted and then the &2&3 down strums are completely muted (aka dead) using your fretting hand. And then, right as you say, the f chord again is played palm muted on the &4&.
Not sure if this is pointing you into the right direction, but I will monitor the discussion so I can learn as well. Again, I have not mastered the song myself at all, but I think it’s super fun and I will continue practicing it for five minutes via my daily routine for the time being.
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Hi, @Jenndye429
thank you for the tips I am super thankful, I think you are probably bang on the money here, thinking about what is happening it most likely is the gain thats too high, as the saying goes sometimes you just can’t see the wood for the trees. I feellike a bit of a wolly now having not thought about this months ago.
I am going to play it clean as well just to make sure I am not muffling the chords, I do have arthritis so there is a good chance I am not making clean transitions with it being a little up tempo. In hindsight I may be better off giving myself the & after 4 to change chords rather than keeping it tight. Thanks again I literally read your reply and it all just clicked . I will post a recording when I get time to see if anyone can givve any technique advise like you suggest, I feel this will help a lot too.
Hi @franzek
thank you for the reply,
yes I have been following the song lesson taken from Justin’s beginners song book serise, the problem I am having is getting the sound correct. At the end of the lesson Justin explains distortion and what you need to adjust to get the sound right, this is what is throwing me off, i cant get it to sound right.
Yes I agree with you that there are different muting techniques used, with the tempo being a bit on the nippy side it is really easy to mess it up. For a relatively simple chord progression and strumming pattern its a real monkey to master, it will not beat me though,lol.
I may be completely wrong here as my musical ear is far from perfect, with the intro it sounds to me like there is no palm mute used just the full mute on the split measure and it is strummed quite hard. The palm mute comes in on the C after the second split measre right before the lyrics start. It sounds like it stops after the f right before the 4 bar c chord and stays off through the chorus and the intro section repeat. It then comes back in on the the c of the second verse after the second split measure of the intro bit.
If you listen to the recording through head phones and follow allong with the tab you can hear clearly when the palm mute stops and starts and pin point the chords it falls on, its very exposed.
I hope I havent confused you here, as I said in my question explanations are not my strongest skill. Please do let me know how you get on learning it, fingers crossed you will have an easier time than i have.
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Nikki, the advice that you have received are spot on ! 
I remember that this song is not on the easy side. It’s one of my favorite song so I started to learn it in grade 2 and I had similar difficulties as you. I took a pause from practicing it and somehow it clicked better a few months later. And I’m pretty sure it started to sound better when I lowered the gain and worked on the muting. If your gain is really high, every small mistakes will be amplified x 1000. So your muting will have to be 100% perfect which is hard at that speed. If your gain is a little less high, it will still sound good with some small mistake.
So, don’t give up, but also there is nothing stopping you from taking a pause from it and coming back later too Both method will work great.
From what you said, I’m pretty sure that you are really confident with the structure of the song. Sometimes, it also helps me to watch other students playthrough. So I uploaded my video for you to see in case it can help because I have nothing more to add in words. The advice that you have received are really good.
Keep it mind that it took me at least a year (with the pause) to get to that speed. And I was in grade 3 when I recorded this and I had worked on a few more grade 3 rock songs. Still, I remember struggling as much as you in the process. So you are not alone, don’t give up
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