I’m trying to learn ‘Loosing my Religion’ by R.E.M., and there’s this thing Justin does where he instantly mutes the two upstrums, giving the song character. It looks like he lifts the fingers of his fretting hand a little bit immediately after the strum, but that only mutes the strings I was holding down, not the others. I’ve also seen others do it, to great effect. What’s the trick, how do I do this?
You are right. Justin is releasing the pressure of his fretting hand fingers to mute the strings. He’s not lifting them off the string completely. He’s just releasing the pressure enough to stop the notes ringing.
Yes, that’s also correct. The open strings will continue to ring when you mute the fretted notes. That’s normal though and that is happening when Justin plays the song. It’s just so fast that it might sound like all the strings are being muted.
The only way to mute all the strings would be to touch them all with either the side of your strumming hand or with your fretting hand fingers. Justin does not do that in the video though. You can hear it more clearly in the video when he demonstrates the verse strumming pattern at 16:05. You can really hear the open strings continuing to ring on the Em chord.
He’s not muting the strings he’s lifting off and then hammering back down giving more of a hammer on effect than a mute. there’s a nice close up of what he’s doing at the 16 minute mark