Teaching a old dog new tricks.

[Bassment80]

Well, I'm as new as you get to this site. Just signed up today and think I may already be addicted. I've been playing (self tought) for over 13 years. I have accomplished more than I had ever expected being a part of 2 signed bands (indie labels), playing tons of shows, meeting lots of people and having a great time. I owe a lot of who I am to music, the musicians I have played with and most importantly the bass guitar itself. So here it goes. I have a deep dark secret I've been hiding all this time. I never learned or even toyed with the idea of playing slap. To some of you this is no big deal but to me it was like my "White Whale." Always had the desire but never the patience or a real good influence since my back ground has always been mostly in metal.


So here I am. Not in a band for the first time in 11 years and what seems like the perfect opertunity to start but where to begin? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Currently all I own are 5 string basses that are tuned super low (G C G C F). The first thing I want to do is get back to standard tuning but before that is there any certian way to set-up the bass for slap? (i.e. action ect.)

Also I've been kicking around the idea of buying a new bass. It's been a while since I bought a new toy. My thoughts are to go back to the basics, a 4 string, but especially one that has that killer slap/pop tone. I'm dancing between a Fender American Standard Jazz or an Ernie Ball Sting Ray. Thoughts?

I did buy a book that seems to cover all the basics fairly well but any technique or technical advice anyone could share would be great. Other than that I can't think of any other questions I could post. Please feel free to chime in.

[JimmyM]

You can slap on any bass. Some like low action, some like high...it doesn't matter.

Both the Jazz and Stingray have killer slap tone. I greatly prefer the Jazz. YMMV. And the bass has little to do with it, although hollowbodies may not lend themselves to it as well as others.

To start, I highly recommend going to Youtube and looking for Larry Graham's slap instruction videos. Others took his ball and ran with it, but he invented it, and he's still the king.

[bmurf]

I'd go for the Jazz. It's one sweet instrument. So long as you don't drop it badly, or lose it, you'll have it forever.

[superhand]

+1 for Larry Graham

Watch some footage of Flea to. He can slap the hell out of a bass.

To me its really not that hard, I don't really use it that much tho. You just hit the lower strings with the side of your thumb and the higher strings you pop them, pull them away from the bass a bit and release so they bounce off the fret board. That's how I do it anyhow.

I don't know if that is the "correct" way to do it, because I pretty much taught myself the technique, but it sounds like slap to me. And if you get the sound you want and you are not hurting yourself (too bad anyway, no pain no gain right?) then you got it.

You might have to tweak your eq a bit, maybe a little more mids and highs than usual, to get that percussive attack.

Just play around with it, it's fun

[jmattbassplaya]

Learn to slap with your thumb parallel to the strings. It`ll allow you to double thumb.