lukeward2004

That Precision is seriously nice!

Those Warwicks are giving me GAS!

Excellent Stuff Stuart - I will be buying this book, and if it is as well laid out and presented as your slap book, you are onto a winner!

Apart from the fact Paul McCartney played one, what is the appeal of these Hofner jobbies? Ive never really taken to them.

Find yourself a second hand Hartle 410XL cab and a 3500 head, and you are well sorted mate.

Ash - Girl from Mars. Pure Sh*te.

I personally find walking basslines more challenging than grooving along - however im trying to put a stop to that as im working through Ed Friedland's book "Building walking basslines". It is more of a brain screw when you start tossing in upper and lower chromatic approach notes and whatnot, and as said before, trying to keep it interesting is always difficult. And Yes, I think you need to know a little bit of theory to be able to do it.

How does the fireplace sound with those cabs? Do you find you get a pretty "hot" signal through it? HAHA see what I did there?? Nice rig!

My P was about a grand from what i recall.

My Bass tutor, Simon White, has an EBS HD350 through two Hartke 4.5XL's - used with his stingray 5 fretless. Talk about power! More punch that Mike Tyson on crack too.

Garry is spot on - 3 years ago I had John at Bravewood Guitars build me a custom Precision bass - he was very accomodating, and incredibly helpful. Here is some porn:

Blue Agave

I have a little mp3 that moves from C Mahor 7 around the Cycle of Fifths, if you want it?

Nice - she has character!

SUre thing mate - sorry we didnt get the chance to properly get all techy before we got kicked off the stage! Let me know of any gigs from next week onwards, cant make the 30th but will most definately get myself down to one in the near future mate!

Nice Hartke/Aguilar rig their Syed - I bet that Valve Pre kicks out some jams!

Ped actually has an interesting style of technique, whereby he uses his right hand entirely to pull off slapped triplets - however i tend to use the left hand slap method to do this....

Buy yourself three things: 1 - A Metronome 2 - A copy of Ed Friedland's Ultimate Slap Bass DVD 3 - A copy of Stu Clayton's Ultimate Slap Bass Book Then all you need is to put the time and effort in - job done.

Hehe - he looks like a cheeky b*gger! Nellie is mad, she loves me too - really sweet dog you have there ped.

[quote name='Josh' post='24235' date='Jun 28 2007, 01:00 AM']But back to slap, you really need to feel it, you need really whack hard with your thumb to great the best tone and when your strating it when your young it does hurt but you will get use to it. Where your slapping now is right, just on the last fret is the perfect place to get the right bounce to feel comfortable.[/quote] I have to disagree with this point - you do not need to slap hard to get a good tone. This depends on the action of your bass - I find a nice low action and slapping over the heel of the neck gives me the best tone, but some, like Larry Graham, play nearer the bridge when slapping and thus the tone is slightly different. If you have a high action then yes, you would probably need to play harder to get a good slap tone, but a nice low action means you dont need to hammer the living daylights out of your strings. And if it hurts, its not doing you any favours - you may get some sore/tender bits on the side of your thumb until the calous develops, but if you experience pain in your arm, STOP - you could be doing more harm than good. If you can, check out Ped's playing - hes a dirty slapper and he plays with a very low, slick action and doesnt hit the strings hard at all. Let the Volume do the work!

+1 for the Afro CUban Basslines book - I have it and its tough but awesome. Great book!

There is a book by Joaquin Des Pres called 101 Disco/Funk basslines - wit tab and notation - that I bought from amazon. Ideal place to start methinks!

Hi Parker_Muse, The first thing I noticed was that your playing was out of time, and was speeding up and slowing down. The second thing I noticed about your playing was your technique, which I imagine will be a large part of the issue. I will try to help where I can and please dont think im having a go at you or your playing - but you need to be honest with yourself about your playing to progress. I was in the same position ab out a year or so ago and I have spent a lot of time and daily practise improving my slap technique, and its only just getting there if im honest. The first and most important thing you must do, whether playing slap or fingers or whatever, is to play IN TIME - if you dont it wont matter if you have the best technique in the world, it will still be crap. As bass players we have to be bang on the money for every beat, or we wont be doing our job properly. Firstly, get yourself a Metronome, set it to a nice slow tempo (60-80 bpm) and ALWAYS play along with it when you practise - it will be hard and will show you how out of time your playing is, but it will improve your own sense of time and space within music and this is one of, if not THE most important things any bassist needs to learn. Secondly, you need to look at your technique - I noticed that you had your thumb angled downwards, towards the floor, which is similar to how flea slaps but ultimately may not be right for you. There is no right or wrong way to slap, merely your own personal preferace. I started off like you with my thumb angled down, but found that I had trouble keeping the slaps clean and round sounding, especially on the A to G strings. I spent a lot of time adjusting my position, playing with my bass virtually under my armpit and using my thumb angled upwards, ALA Mark King, but found I couldnt quite get the pops sounding right. In the end I came to the conclusion that for me, I needed my bass at the same height standing up as it would be sitting down, so although it may not look "cool" to some, it meant that I could actually play comfortably with some conviction. I realised that by playing with my thumb angled in line with the strings, with a slight bend on the end, I was at my most comfortable. Look at my playing position here: Also, study other players, like Mark King, such as in this video: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jpcBq3EJNI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jpcBq3EJNI[/url] Equally, have a look at Marcus Miller's playing position: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHdN_O5k3WM&mode=related&search="]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHdN_O5k3WM...ted&search=[/url] I think the first thing you need to do is find a comfortable playing position, and play around until you find something that suits you. There are many different ways to play this style of bass, but you need to get comfortable before anything else. The next thing you need to do is concentrate on how clean your slaps & pops are - start with a nice slow beat on the metronome, and start off just using your thumb - DO NOT RACE AHEAD, wait until you are 100% confident with your thumb and then start dropping in some pops and doublestops. There are two fantastic resources that will help to no end - Ed Friedland's "Ultimate Slap Bass" DVD, which is the first port of call and will explain some of the points made so far in a more visual way, and secondly is a book by our very own Stuart Clayton, called "Ultimate Slap Bass" coincidently. I would highly recommend buying both of these as they are very informative and have improved my slapping 10 fold since I started a year ago! Hope this helps and if you are in my area im happy to show you a few things to get you started mate. Luke

What, No HEAD? Man, that relationship must suck