How long?

[d8g3jdh]

I have only been playing bass for around 5 months now, and have just been learing to slap. I have also just started listening to some of the best bassists out there (flea, Les, etc.) and was wondering if the more experienced players here could tell me how long it took them to learn some harder stuff, like jaco, flea, les, etc. and how long it took them to become actually decent at slap?

[JimmyM]

It's pretty much a never-ending struggle. You can develop the skill to play stuff like that in a year or two if you're a prodigy, or it could take you all your life and you never develop that skill. Depends on how much you practice and how dedicated you are to it.

But just remember that brute skill without emotion is nothing. So the important thing is to make sure the music you play means something other than brute skill.

[Daniel Baskin]

It IS a never-ending struggle, but now that I'm at my 7th year--really actually only my 4th year on EB, 7th on DB--I can tell you that I have at least some degree of expertise on the jist of Victor Wooten's techniques, and have tried some of Vic and Marcus Miller's stuff.

Grug, you have a good start going. Get ambitious. Get discouraged, but always come back fighitng. Get s l ow, and work things out. Get faster, and faster, and faster, then crash...then go slow again. Get going.