Slap failure

[Bobzilla]

I can slap. I can get a nice percussive tone that I am happy with. On the E string.

As soon as I try and translate to the A string, it all goes horribly wrong. Twangy, hitting the E string, buzzy. Nothing like the clarity and hit of the E string.

How do I break out of this and be the slapper I know I can be?

Ta

[louisthebass]

Best thing to do is to practice hitting the string on the last fret of the fingerboard on all the strings. It takes a while for it to sound good, trust me...

If you're still having trouble, either check out Marlowe DK's tutorials on YT or get "The Slap Bass Programme" DVD by Alexis Sklarevski.

[TheGreek]

I agree about using MarloweDK - very helpful for a beginner - I also found these very helpful - from our own Scott Whitley

[url="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=free+slap+bassics&aq=f"]http://www.youtube.c...ap+bassics&aq=f[/url]

Edited May 2, 2012 by TheGreek

[lobematt]

Marlowe's lessons are really good. The way I learnt it though was to start off just slowly moving up and down the strings, four hits each.

[JayPH]

Same here I am learning from Marlowes tutorials now. Things I'm noticing is that you have to do it really slow and build up gradually. Also I am noticing more and more that you dont need do hit the strings hard at all. The more relaxed you are the better the tone is. I get really tense when i play slap bass and it translates really badly in the results. When I'm nice and relaxed I can play much better. Economy of movement is key.