| Speaking from experience...
It'll pay to get good at finding frets fast, and so on, before you learn to slap. However, starting early's not such a bad thing, so here's the Mark's Magical Mystery Moves for Slapping Guide™.
Hold your 'slapping hand' out. Do a thumbs-up sign. I find this position is what I'm in most of the time as I slap with the joint of my thumb and it frees up my fingers to pop or whatever. You want your hand to be perpendicular to the strings. Basically, position your hand so if you drew a line from your wrist to your middle finger, it'd go over your furthest up pick-up. This should mean you're slapping pretty near the end of the neck.
Try to get the rocking motion with your wrist right. To start, try and keep your wrist in roughly the same place. Let it rotate, but don't move it up and down all over the place.
You want to just slap the string with the main joint of your thumb. It's a quick "elastic" action. It's not move-bang-move back. It's more fluid, so as soon as you hit the string you're recoilling your hand ready to slap the minx again. It's hard to get your head around from such a poor explanation, but once you start slapping you'll get the gist because it'll sound right.
Disclaimer: This is just my experience. What works for someone won't work for someone else in many cases. Just try and use it as what it is - a rough guide.
Good luck, and stick with it!
Mark.
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Rhythm Otter.
Last edited by Home-made : 01-04-2004 at 06:56 PM.
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