Muting while slapping

[Dougie1316]

Need a bit of help with this, muting while slapping is difficult, I use my left and and the palm of my right to mute but during quick sections where I really can't mute with my left hand or my right it freaking sucks, ie the fills in Pow by Graham Central Station.

I'm looking into investing a mute but I'd like to hear if you guys have tips for muting fast runs.

 

[adi77]

may i ask how many strings on your bass?

 

[Dougie1316]

4

 

[adi77]

4

hi dougie1316, i just chkd out pow on youtube.. most of the muting seems to be left hand coz the right hand's damn busy to do all the muting.. i use my left thumb to mute the lower strings and the rest of the fingers when not fretting are usually doing some mute work.. besides the muting technique i can hear quite heavy compression being used on that bass, compression can help "clean up" the slap act a bit.. you will probably need a compressor like a boss LMB3 or better still something like an empress comp.. you should ask bongomania about compressors..
best of luck

 

[Dougie1316]

Cheers for the reply mate but I was just wondering how the best way to mute with your left hand is when your playing a fast run? Seemingly I'm using those fingers to actually fret the notes.

 

[LakeEffect]

I get most of my left hand muting from my middle finger fully stretched out, laying right up agains the board and the strings. This does, however, pose some minor complications. For instance, lines that you would default to fretting predominately with your middle finger while playing fingerstyle need to be approaches somewhat different with the left hand.

It is, for me at least, worth it to clean up my playing even though there are a few lines that my fretting slows down a bit on. Even so, I think it's worth it because it really isn't impressive to play fast and have it sound like a mess, its impressive when you can pull it off smoothly and cleanly. I use the middle finger to do this because, not only is it the longest and lays the cleanest across all the strings, but also because it still leaves the width of my hand to fret with (say, as opposed to choosing index, which would then limit my reach all together, rather than just in some combinations).

Give it a try, may work, may not - it appears that slap, perhaps more so than any style, is highly dependent on what works for the individual person.

 

[LakeEffect]

Also, obviously, when the middle is necessary for fretting, you can alternate with your others, index for example to play the mute role. I've found that using some combination of having at least one finger laying across all the strings most of the time is much more consistent and predictable (read: clean) than trying to wrap your thumb around whenever you need some muting. The thumb thing works, of course, but it works even better when you're only using it as a luxury, rather than a necessity.

If you have "flying finger syndrome" (as I did), the one finger laying across all strings may be pretty difficult at first - the bonus is, though, that it is also a way to rid yourself of the flying finger syndrome on all your lines, not just slap, and you'll be a better player for it no matter what techniques you're using.

 

[adi77]

Cheers for the reply mate but I was just wondering how the best way to mute with your left hand is when your playing a fast run? Seemingly I'm using those fingers to actually fret the notes.

play the fast run really slow and then try muting the unwanted notes/ringing.. keeping the left hand fingers flat against the fingerboard helps.. i mean like when you use the flats of the fingers to fret instead of the ball-end..... and i really use the left thumb to mute quite a bit when slapping.. i guess everyone does it differently. and i'm not kidding about the slowing down stuff.. helped clean up a lot of my bass playing..

 

[Schmorgy]

For left-hand muting technique, I reach out to Rocco Prestia's method. Most of the time, the dude only fretted with his index and middle fingers, and he used the ring and pink fingers to mute the strings giving that steccato feel. Even finger style I use this method since I find trying to palm-mute while plucking REALLY awkward and hard to do while playing powerfully.