Slap me silly

[chilievans]

I seem to be having trouble getting a clear slap tone when I'm playing on the D and G strings up around the 12 fret area?
Marcus Miller can do it so why can't I? (He is a little bit better than me mind you) What am I doing wrong guys? Help me please it's driving me nuts

[Fat Rich]

Whereabouts are you slapping the string and how many frets do you have? 24 fret basses sometimes are a bit more prone to this.

Try thumbing over the top 2 or 3 frets and see if that helps, if not try slapping further back between the end of the fingerboard and the neck pickup.

Also you could check your technique, are you really bouncing off the string or is your thumb muting the string a little? You can get away with it on the heavier strings fretting lower notes on the neck as the string has more weight and momentum and is harder to mute, above the 12th fret and the string is much more likely to be affected.

Finally, you could try thumbing more from above so you're putting more energy into moving the string side to side relative to the pickup, if you thumb it into the neck there's a limit to how much movement you can get into the string. This can drastically increase the volume of your slap tone and also add clarity.

Hope that makes some sense!

It's partly down to experimentation and finding what works for you, good luck!

Edited June 24, 2011 by Fat Rich

[chilievans]

I have 21 frets and I tend to slap at the end of the fretboard

I'll try out what you suggested and I'll let you know how I get on

Thanks Rich