I’ve been playing the guitar for a while now. Although I can bend strings, I’ve reached a point where I wish to make my playing sound more “precise”. As I’m mostly self taught, I was never shown how to bend a string properly without other strings sounding as I do it. In every recording I’ve heard, the bends sound perfect, no matter whether it’s live or in the studio, so I’m obviously doing something wrong. The strings above the bent string sound whenever I bend up towards them. I’ve tried figuring out a way of placing the palm of my hand on these strings to muffle them, but I can’t seem to get it right. I’ve figured out a way of suppressing the bent string when I release it, so that’s not a problem.
Is there a technique that I’m missing, or is it just practise with the palm muting?
I generally mute unwanted strings with my right palm. You need to use it judiciously. What I mean is that my palm isn’t forever resting on the bottom two or three strings, if I do that then I inadvertantly mute them when I want them to sound. Instead I rest my palm on the specific strings I want muted only when I’m bending a note.
Also I bend using my ring finger and my index and middle finger sit on the same string to provide some extra strength. They also serve to mute the string immediately above the one being bent. The trick is to make sure that the string above isn’t being held down against the fret board, but gets pushed directly up and stays clear of the board.
My thumb on my left hand is often curled over the fret board slightly and mutes the low E when required (definitely not the classical thumb-in-middle of neck technique, but hey, it worked for Hendrix.) So generally my right palm only needs to mute one or two strings at any time.
Ultimately, practise and experiment, find out what works for you.
Oh, the good thing about good muting of strings is that you can get away with less than perfect picking technique. Or you can put in a lead fill while keeping up a strumming pattern rather than picking individual strings.
Thanks, I’ll try these suggestions out.
My guitar teacher taught me to bend with three fingers. My ring finger goes on the fret being bent from, and then I use the first, middle, and ring to bend the string. I’ve got my thumb coming up around the neck…the usual place for the thumb (hard to describe). It’s really hard to explain what I do with my wrist…it’s kind of like i’m trying to “unscrew” the neck (if it were screwed on). I get some serious power this way.
I’m not the greatest guitar player, but I bend well enough to please a fussy guitar teacher 
You may not want to do this to your guitar… but I just bought a recording of a band called Ancient Future that uses a “scalloped fretboard guitar.” It has the surface of the fretboard scooped out between each fret. This allows for bending in a direction perpendicular to the fretboard. No bumping into other strings. It was inspired by the scooped-out fretboards of some Indian string instruments, giving the ability to control microtones very minutely.
I don’t think a scalloped guitar has enough scalloping to allow full tone bends just by pushing down on the strings. I was under the impression that the benefit of a scalloped fretboard is that it removes friction between your fingers and the fretboard.
At any rate, it’s not something you’d do to a guitar, rather you’d buy one already made like that. Saves the very likely possibility of wrecking your guitar.
The liner notes to the disk explained that the scalloped-fretboard guitar is meant for bending notes, and on the track you can hear it being done. It’s Asian-style music and the bending is more subtle than in a screaming electric blues guitar solo. If you bought a new guitar and had your old one sitting around, and if it wasn’t too expensive to begin with, and you had woodworking skills…