Guitar question: ringing discord

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I'm learning a song (Waltz for Zizi).
It starts with me playing four notes within an e chord all at once. Then I switch to a couple of individual notes, but when I lift the fingers on my left hand, the strings I was just holding down reverberate and make the sound wrong. Any tips?

I'm not that good at the technical part of playing guitar (despite my teachers' best efforts), but off the top of my head you could try muting the strings with your picking hand right before you take your fingers off. Also, how calloused are your fretting fingers? In my experience the harder and smoother the callouses the less likely you are to get that reverberation you described. Something else that just came to mind...how hard are you pressing down with your fretting fingers? Less pressure, just enough to let the notes ring correctly, might make it easier to lift your fingers without extra noise. One problem I had was thinking I didn't have enough time to move my fingers to the right places so I tended to hurry. Maybe you should try it slowly and deliberately first. Then, as you get smoother at the transition, you could start moving a little faster. Then slowly increase the speed until your at the piece's tempo.

I hope that was at least somewhat helpful.

well, there's probably several ways (depending on what you're describing)

Eventually, you get enough control to just hit the strings you need to. That's one way.

Also, if you hit the strings over the 5th and 7th fret (the part that sticks up from the fretboard), you get harmonics. Sometimes that can cause notes to drone on (actually, it's a good way to tune your guitar as well...

The thing that drives me batty is having new strings, then sliding up a few frets and you get that 'screech' from the wound strings...yeesh..

Sounds like your pickups are way too sensitive. If you have a volume knob on the guitar have you tried turning that down while turning the amp up to compensate? Also, I'd imagine if you have really light gauge strings they'll be more prone to singing on their own for a while.

Thanks guys. That should be helpful.