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Tapping your foot while playing - Please Stop?
- Thread starter darwin-bass
- Start date
The only time i consider foot tapping an issue is when it is audible on stage. If i can't hear it, i really don't mind. I don't tap my foot much really, i use my ears to keep time. I do move around quite a bit otherwise though, even when standing at an upright bass.
I've played with some people that tap loudly, and it is not always in time with the actual groove. It's sort of like they are just doing it subconsciously as a reflex. Those are the people that create the problem. It's as if i brought a metronome on stage with me and turned it on during a song at some random moment.
I've played with some people that tap loudly, and it is not always in time with the actual groove. It's sort of like they are just doing it subconsciously as a reflex. Those are the people that create the problem. It's as if i brought a metronome on stage with me and turned it on during a song at some random moment.
I tap my foot sometimes in learning process along with counting in my head. On stage may tap on slow country tune when I play 1 note every few measures
Some instructors recommend toe tapping to keep time. As strictly a student living room electric bassist, I stomp and sway so much it jars the camera and shows up on my student YouTube vids. But nobody complains about it because I'm just about the only viewer. Bass playing is as much therapy as music for me, and since it is just me and my drummer, Roland Cube, I raise high the roof beams with my stomp and graceful sway. Cause that's the way Willie Daddy do it in the privacy of my house, a blues legend in my own mind even though I'm a renter.
For those who did not read my OP, the point is to stop tapping my foot so I can sway or move in other ways. Not to stop keeping time with the body.
Do your own thang...tap 'em if you got 'em.
Sway if that works for you
You can dance if you want to.
Sway if that works for you
You can dance if you want to.
It is interesting though, how our perceptions of self do drive us to consider things and exaggerate them in our minds.
Smooth_bass88
vaxx!
- Oct 31, 2006
- 12,122
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- have been on nationally released albums, charting on the Billboard 200
ok, so from now on do not tap your foot EVER. Practice playing bass without tapping your foot, and every gig from here on in, force yourself to not tap your foot. Eventually the 'problem' will go away.
Not at all, that is not what I said. But some people need to tap their foot. Why stop them if it helps them lock in? Why tell them it looks stupid? It is like telling guitarists that they need to hang their guitars down to their knees to look cool, even if it is counter productive to their playing.
