My BIG mistake w/ Slap Bass (don’t do this!)
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
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Graham Cracker- Victor Bailey! Amazing line! 🙌🏾🙌🏾
Maybe a clearer explanation would be: in slapping there are 2 slap techniques (bounce and through) and 3 thumb positions (up/parallel and down) but only one allows for playing both techniques. However, I think there there are other things that the up/down thumb allow. For instance, the down thumb is faster for slap/popping and the tone is a bit different for not just the slap (harmonics) but also the pop since it occurs closer to the bridge not to mention the string being a bit tighter there. So, it’s not so much of right/wrong technique as much it is a question so what exactly are you trying to play and the sound you want. Great video! You’ve touched on something I’m not sure I’ve ever really thought about but tend to just do subconsciously.
Cheers for watching - totally agree! :)
exactly! I place my finger like Ida, but bounce my finger
Flea is awesome. But I feel like people are sometimes unwilling to acknowledge that he's technically nowhere near many other players. And he doesn't need to be, because that isn't his thing - but it's still true.
Oh he’s technically great, just his technique is pretty much mad as a soup sandwich and you couldn’t use it on a function gig. If nothing else, the stamina he used to bring was something else 😅
To be fair I think a lot of people like him for the meme, because he's a really famous bass player from a really famous band and don't think about it beyond that.
His writing chops is what impresses me. He comes up with some monster bass lines.
Sometimes technique is like a tool box to make music with, of course you can expand it and learn all the advanced stuff like double thumbing and double plucking patterns but Flea doesn't need that stuff to make good music.
People are unwilling? Anybody that knows anything about music knows that flea is just a show off and he plays like shit 60% of the time.
This is great, and it's something that is rarely taught. There are really two different things here - the orientation of the thumb with respect to the strings, and the direction you hit the strings - and they're independent of each other. You can bounce in any of the three orientations, or you can play through in any of the three orientations.
I don't think you can play through if your thumb is up or down. You've have to incorporate your whole arm to accomplish that.
💎⭐ this was the unlock I thought after all these years I was never going to find. THANK YOU!
You had established a high standard with that blouse. Can't get worse! Great video! Great tips!
You should see the shirt I'm gonna wear 2moz, lol ;)
Great video. A problem I have with the third 'parallel' approach is that it doesn't sound how I expect slap bass to sound. I find that the second technique provides the correct level of 'slap' while allowing one to remain in control. Of course this is completely subjective!
MK is the greatest
I look forward to taking the technique class once I finish the fretboard accelerator class which is AWESOME. Great classes... Thanks for all you do Scott
The technique accelerator is awesome. I did it a couple years ago. I still need to go back & finish working on the slap & pick sections. It really helped me solve & develop finger independence & get better technique to be 2nd nature.
I agree i love parrallel technique, it allows you to play through or bouncing as you wish. Bouncing works well on bigger low strings but on upper strings the sound can become small. Playing thru allow you to double thump the strings, down, and also poping the string when going up from down position. ( a bit similar to picking with a pick if that makes sense.) much more options. ( see marcus miller playing as example, or victor wooten.)
Long thumbs, short thumbs, wiggly old knarled thumbs
Plumbers hands, spider hands, bony old painful hands,
Limp wrists, tight wrists, carpel tunnel sticky wrists
I just wanna be a bass man.
Great video.
love to see that scott's playing with his thumb parallel now!
Im not a bassist, im a drummer but you should dive deeper on how to approach slap in a musical situation.
I always love it when bassists approach slap not only with the thumb through technique but also approach slaps and pop sounds as a drummer.
It always makes locking in easier.
Scott please do a video on the 3 times john myung went beast mode
Actually, while I do the parallel thumb thing, I don't thing there's a wrong technique for slapping. Whatever you do to get the sound you want, it's fine, as long as you play in time ;-) Flea, Tony Levin, Joe Dart, Krzysztof Ścierański (Polish bass virtuoso) all use the down thumb technique and they're all absolutely marvellous. On the other hand, Wojtek Pilichowski (another Polish bass virtuoso) uses the up technique but he always teaches to play through the string, landing the thumb on the string below. So... your mileage may vary ;-)
Sure there isn't a "wrong" technique but I can speak from experience as someone (similar to Scott) that also started off with the down thumb/bounce off technique and then eventually learned to play parallel/strike through. The down thumb/bounce off technique is objectively the worst way to learn slap bass, especially as a less experienced player. My reason for this is based on how the muscles in the thumb work. If you have the thumb pointing downward like that it's often much more difficult to control the muscles and means less control over your technique overall. I say this knowing full well 95% of the muscle movement is in your wrist, but in the parallel and upward thumb techniques, the control over your thumb movement is far more precise. Yes there are bass legends that use the downward thumb, but those guys are usually the exceptions to the rule, not the rule itself
(Also sorry for the long comment)
"You could almost give your nose a bit of a pick" 😄 Great video Scott, looking forward to the Technique Accelerator!
lol ;)
I love your shirts from the "James May" collection.
Take the course! It's amazing!
What a nice mum you have Scott, and she is right! Great video as well.
I have experimented with slap over the years and even half-heartedly attempted following Victor Wooten's double-thumbing tutorials but I could never find myself really enjoying the style. The bounce slap never had enough fundamental / low-end for me. It's more "percussion" than "bass".
When you mentioned that double-thumbing is essentially a through-stroke that has more low-end and less overtones it finally clicked for me. I *need* bass to have a strong fundamental and Victor never really mentioned this aspect of the technique. Since watching this video I have finally been enjoying learning how to play slap technique and have even dialed-in a grindy/clanky patch on my HX Stomp XL in order to achieve some of the modern metal double thumbing tones that are in vogue right now.
Thanks so much for inspiration, Scott!
I can physically feel the bass frequencies in my headphones from the bass🎧
:)
Hey Scott good to hear from ya, thanks for the vid. Keep those peas frozen...lol....😊🎸☁️
I actually slap with parallel thumb all this time and i never thought of it as a thing i just assume its a down thumb :D
And i was trying so hard to do upthumb because of how many people said its the more versatile technique, but i never able to get a nice slap with upthumb
Edit: also you can bounce while doing the parallel thumbs and it will sound the same as up/down thumb
Same here.
Depends on the song and how deep into the gig you’re in .. You can end up using all three techniques or a combination of all 3 ..
I am from ETHIOPIA I watch ur video's for over 6 years or more years tnx
Thank YOU, Debol :)
Glad you reference Mark King. He's one of the greatest slappers of all time. Mark's thumb is so strong/solid, that he can do stuff with bouncing that the rest of us need to do with double-stroking. He's an absolute beast.
I never even thought about what direction my thumb was pointing until I watched this video. Turns out I'm an up-thumber.
Yes! New shirt for 7 days--- it's a magic number!
I would have to say that Victor Wooten invented the double thumb and the thumb parallel to the string technique.
Another issue with the scott's parallel technic is that he does not play on the neck but into the void between neck and pick up.
Its better to land the thumb on the last frets, on the neck. It gives a fixed depht for a more controled mouvement, the string smashes the frets more directly. So the sound is better.
I could see where that might help consistency, but I think there are more important considerations like how the thumb's position affects tone and the other fingers' ability to pop the strings.
You can't go through the strings if you play over the fretboard (unless your action is stupidly high) and therefore you get a weaker tone. Plus you can't get the rhythmic clack off the last fret.
Excellent video! I've been thumb-up 👍 so that's why I've not been able to double-thumb!
One advantage of the Flea approach is that it's easier to switch between slap and standard - to me (up-thumb more or less), it seems like it always takes a split-second to change between the two techniques. Which is why, for instance on a jam, I get the impression that once I start to slap, I'm sort of locked into it and can't go back to standard plucking without breaking the groove.
Yeah - interesting! I never though of that :)
@@devinebass That means a lot to me :D
It only occurred to me very recently, I think I was watching Flea on one of their older songs (Fight Like A Brave?)
every single day: a new shirt ? Let me just say that I wouldn't have it any other way
ON IT, Chris ;)
Thanks for the video, little nuances but huge differences! The shirt part with mom was hilarious 😆
I have always used the parallel/ida thumb slap method .. I didn't choose the method, it just came naturally so I guess the best way to slap is the way that's natural to you ...
Although , having said all that,I do agree that there is much more clearer and dynamic tone from the parallel method and it's much more versatile for double thumb of course
What an awesome bass
Scott, that polar pattern on the mic sounds like it is not facing you, but picking up more of the room, is it an end address mic?
For a moment I thought you'd be sharing a video of your hoverboard incident... Good to see your hands are OK.
I play flat thumb, like Victor Wooten and Les Claypool do. I learned to play slap by watching videos of them playing live back in the 90s.
I do the through as well as the bounce depending on what sound or line I’m playing. Larry Graham does a through too doesn’t he or does he
If you haven't been through the technique accelerator course, DO IT! It's totally worth it!
Ahhhh, cheers!
"two strokes for the price of one. Economy, man" 😂😂😂
Sweet looking Bass
I've always done parallel from the beginning simply because thumb-down was more chaotic (for me) and meant you (I) had to be much more precise. I still normally "bounce" in thumb-parallel, but I've also learned to play through. I HIGHLY discourage new players to use thumb-down simply because the vast majority (of new players) I've heard are sloppy with it. Whereas they naturally wouldn't be so much so with thumb-parallel. And I feel one of the BIGGEST keys to a great bass sound is just good muting/precision (they do go hand in hand). And since you really don't have as much lower string coverage as you would on, say, a drag finger-style technique with floating thumb, you really must ONLY get that thumb where it needs to be. So RH precision and LH extended muting techniques (like thumb on lower strings or finger cross over) must be used to get a super clean sound.
For years I always wondered why you didn’t slap with that approach despite having all these instructional videos
yeah it was the same for me, i pretty much started slap like flea with down thumb then with stuart zender i transition into a more up thumb and because of that i struggle for years. basically from 2015 to 2020 i didn't bother with double thumbing because it was so hard for me but then i transition to a parrallel through string approach and in less than a years i was started to feel confortable and i could attempt tune like "Power" from marcus miller and the economy of motion also make some other tune way easier to approach.
LOVE Power by MM :)
Mono neon has no shame on clothes… you’ll be fine!😂😂😎
EXACTLY ;)
That's my dream bass right there. That thing sounds killer and looks great also.
What kind of bass is it, do you know? It does sound great...
@@thatsmetalking345 F-Bass BN5
👍
Hola scott, felicidades por tu compromiso de compartir tus conocimientos sobre este increíble instrumento, me interesa saber si tus vídeos los puedo encontrar subtitulados en español y que precio tiene la mensualidad para México; muchas gracias.
My nightmare is some day I actually get really, really good at bass and then some idiots decide to start calling me the best.
I don't want to be compared to anyone, this is not what music is about.
If possible check out Brian Bromberg’s approach too slapping
That f bass not only looks, bugs sounds absolutely incredible!
Ahhh, cheers Thomas :)
Les Claypool has a cool approach. While using the parallel thumb technique he often bounces off of the strings. But also for some riffs and styles I've seen him drive through the strings and even pull up using the thumb. I find that technique to have the best sound and versatility.
Yeah, I think Victor Wooten does similar :)
@@devinebass definitely! Vic can do just about anything, lol 😆
Nice insights! (but ... weired micro sound. Any fx enabled?)
I have always been a fun of the Victor Wooten tone, and i could only get that from going through the string, Plus then you get the double thumb thing going on, ECONOMY MEHN !!!
Here we are, in our mid-40's just trying to figure out wtf to wear lol. How bout a SBL hats-over-the-years vid? ah what can ya do :)
Looking at this video has shown me one of my major issues with slap bass. It has nothing to do with the hands but has all to do with amp volume. I have been trying to get a sound by slapping hard on the strings with the amp at at fairly low volume (in my study) so all I am getting is the noise of a string hitting the fretboard hard like a bit of 4x4 wood. I will now try moderating how hard I slap the string and use the volume knob on the amp. Once I get that down I will then experiment with the techniques shown. Thank you. PS: For what it's worth the shirt looks fine to me (of course my wife tells me my fashion sense is in my a$%e) :) PPS: I think the techniques shown are determined somewhat by how one holds their bass ie. with a low slung bass like Flea's it is nearly impossible to play with a thumb up style.
Thanks for the video. What happened with the gloves? Your hands doesn't seem to shake anymore when extended.
IDA IS A GODESS!!!!!! Seriously though, she's unbelievable.
Actually - thank you for that. That's a super-helpful pice of advice Scot - many, many gratitudes.
100% agree - she's SO great!
Just gotta say love the mom time
Call your moms…
I lost mine 6 years ago but I play bass everyday like she’s right here watching me 🤘
creo que la técnica esta directamente relacionada con la fisionomía de tu mano
I simply s...k at slapping. That is something i do really need to work on. That being said it was a relief when i discovered (about a couple of months ago) that the "slap through" tecnique was legit along with the more common "bounce" tecnique (either thumb up or thumb down) as it was (and still is) the only way i could manage to slap strings other than E but i thought I was doing something wrong... :-).
The differece of tone is noticeable tho, so I think it isn't really a matter of "being right" or "being wrong", but much more a matter of which tone you like most and which tecnique you can master. I wish I could play like Flea... :-).
I watched the TM Stevens instruction video when i was 12 and started playing bass. Its been down thumb mostly since then. Some nice and tasty slap on James Browns Gravity from Stevens and ofc on all his solo work. TM Stevens video from SBL requested (:
And ofc the Alexis Sklarevski slap bass program
NEW SHIRT
I'll be realistic with the accelerator program - if it opened in September/October when days are shorter and I spend more time at home I would have already sent my money 😃
Mark king is the goat ! And sings at same time
Sounds like an episode of Seinfeld. Bass guitar and a Funny shirt. :)
What is the name of the third bass player (the lady)?
Ida Nielsen. She used to play with Prince, she also has some solo albums out. She's amazing!
@@bystrouska ty
Wish had a new Bass guitar now
Me too, lol
also mohini dey slaps parallel to the strings
0:41 - You two sure look alike. I'm a down-thumb. I have been trying to train myself to play parallel and follow-through so I could double-thumb a la Victor Wooten. It is not going well.
Where exactly is your accent from bro? I hear Leeds area of course but I am hearing other dialect, did you live down South for a while???
Hello Scott, I'm currently working through the Bass Technique Accelerator (4th Enrollment) that opened up sometime around mid-last year. I haven't made it to the slap bass portion yet (2021 was a busy year...) With that in mind, would there be any "corrections" or anything that you'd change after the fact for the content included in that lesson?
Surely the parallel thumb thing as you strike through is technically plucking with the thumb isn't it. It isn't slapping.
The struggle for me isn't about the slapping, it's the popping. I can never seem to get the pop to be on time. It's always behind. Maybe I'm grabbing too much string. Hopefully there's a lesson coming on this.
Grabbing the string by the middle of my fingertip above the pickup helps me control how deep my finger goes, which makes the popping quicker - that's why some players use ramps, to control how deep you go under the strings.
Is the parallel thumb technique called double thumbing when you strike through it and then come back up through it ?
Great video. Any tips on the pop, keeping it clean and the volume even?
One coming in a few days Antonio :)
practice octaves at a slow/moderate pace
If you want to add double thumb in your technique, parallel thumb is the only way
Larry Graham style. And no one talks about him. Or at least, rarely. He is the father of it all.
I really have been focusing on my thumb, it’s so difficult 😅
can't be rock n roll with your bass that high, Flea's got no choice!
If you're attempting that with your shirts you need to get Henning Pauly involved! Ha ha
lol
Nope, you're wrong. The other techniques are not "wrong", they're just different. If they don't sound like you'd like them to sound, just don't use them, simple. Many people don't like the sound of the plectrum in a bass and yet you advertise that everyone should learn how to use it. It's a totally subjective thing - if you like a technique, if you like how it sounds, just use it, otherwise don't. Simple. Or are we going to say now that Marcus Miller's technique is wrong? Louis Johnson's? Stanley Clarke's? Why is Mark King even being approached here as having a "wrong" technique if, among with all the other players mentioned in this comment and in the video, he's one of the most important bass players in the history of bass?
Frankly, if those "other" ways of playing (not like Ida's technique) are wrong, I wish I could play wrong that well. And have the amazing "wrong" tone those other guys have. So my recommendation, even though I don't teach bass playing anymore, is: DO THIS (if you like it). Let your beloved musicians influence you, dive deep into it, because music is about having fun, above all things.
I don't think he explicitly means that its the wrong technique, its more of a clickbaity thing.
@@Qwervy maybe you're right, but from his final opinion about his tone preference etc it does seem like the message is that the other techniques are wrong. Coming from a CZcamsr that might be fine, but not coming from an educator.
Do these styles also generally apply to (upside down right handed bass) lefty players? I think I often see this kind of player slapping each their own way, (for example /watch?v=5hbs3keoyrY) and I have a bit of trouble identifying the styles you showed (but I'm a noob here, might as well be my lack of understanding) with this kind of player.
Hey Scott why don't you do it with the hat and the shirt every day as outrageous as possible please
I wonder if there is anybody that plays the way I do. I play with my thumb parallel to the string. It is my plucking finger that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do it. Unlike most players that use the tip of the finger to pluck, I actually use the first knuckle of my index finger. So if you were to hold your hand like a gun, the sight on the “gun” is where I have a big callus. Just curious. So when I’m resting, my thumb is usually sitting in between two strings and so is my index finger.
I think you invented a new technique. If it works for you, do it!
Outlandish random shirts!
As Prince would say: Game. Blouses.🤣
Question - a pop quiz even 😀 I've tended to use my forearm but I notice some people just use finger power for the pops and hardly move their arm. Any opinions?
wasn´t using the forearm a no-no in any case as it´s easier to use the wrist for the right movement? Or am I misunderstanding you?
@@richardtenhave4897 for the slaps I was taught to keep the wrist straight, keep the elbow still, and rotate the forearm, so I tend to use a mix of wrist and forearm for the pops. This thumping style seems to need a different movement for the slaps to do the follow through and I'm finding that's changing my pops too.
Cute Scott! But I would have added a pussycat bow.
Ida slaps a lot like Larry Graham.
I've tried for nearly 40 years and still cant do it.
Get yourself a double Bass if u want proper Slap !!
No glove? 👍🏽
The shirt closes left over right (buttons on the right side), is it not? Thats for men. Because from origine, ladies are supposed to ride horses with both legs on the left side of the horse, women clothes are suposed to close right over left (buttons on the left side), to prevent the wind from blowing into the gaps between the buttons.
Norman bates blouse
YES!
"....economy man.". Well...enough...said, Scott. Thank you.
Thank YOU, Eric! :)
Your mom is pretty, you should give her more spots on videos!
I'll tell her - she'll be stoked!
WOW that F bass sounds incredible!
You're forgetting the aspect of also looking cool.