Question about flea!

Whatever works for you is fine There's nothing wrong with thumping through the string, although I think Flea slaps the traditional way, not the Wooten way.

 

I think by traditional, he means the thumb's position.

 

Slap any way you want to slap.

 

A lot of people slap the traditional Marcus Miller way with the thumb pointing up and perpendicular to the string. I can never get a good tone this way. I do a more Les Claypool/Flea like way although I think Flea gets a little too into it sometimes and messes up.

I have yet to find someone who slaps like Les Claypool/Flea with better solos. But I want to.

-Eric.

 

This is interesting because i spent at least 3 years slapping in the 'non traditional' way a'la Flea. It took me a long time to accept and understand why this method would not work out in the long run. To fully understand the impact you're trying to make with the slap sound, it's dynamics that comes first into the picture. Imagine slapping the non-traditional way with dynamics; you're using your whole palm to control the dynamics; at fast tempos, you have no choice but to use your whole hand. When i checked out Marcus, i realised that this guy was getting is fluidity on slap because of his thumb action; instead of moving his whole hand, he only moves his wrist and more specifically, his thumb.

This is not a hard and fast rule. There are multiple opinions about this but look at it this way- if you want to exploit the slap technique to involve dynamics and eveness, thumb action is definitely the way to go; however if you're looking at creating a 'slap sound' without 'dynamics' or 'eveness', the hand over strings method works (it worked for me for quite a few years) because you're projecting a whole sound that's meant to be heard as a 'whole' sound and not anything else. An analogy would be a paintbrush- use a fat brush tip, cover more area at a point in time but lose out on detail....if this doesn't make sense, I apologize for not being clear enough; I'm sure there're others on this forum with clearer views; it'll take some time to get used to the perpendicular action but believe me, it's going to become a standard by way of which eveness will be judged. If I'm wrong...well, there's more practicing to do, right!

FunKKing puts it best as well! Cheers!

 

Great post - I have been tolding slapping the whole-hand style is a mistake in the long term. It's good to hear some of the advantages and disadvantages.

 

i slap with my thumb parralell to the string, ala wooten

lowsound