Hello, I want to be a slapper

[wal4string]

It seems to me you want to run before you can walk. Been playing bass for longer than you, in the last 10 years mostly as a pro. In my extended resting time I try to learn a new technique, or try and transcribe lines I find interesting. On one such rest period I heard and really liked the bass on Hideaway by David Sandborn. The track begins with figure style and then goes into slap then back and fore, fingurestyle to slap. Struggle and listen as hard as I could I just couldn't get the slap sections down. Could never see myself playing track in a live situation I just gave up. Roll forward a few months and I fall across a second hand book by Stuart Clayton of Level 42 transcriptions and descided to knuckle down and learn to play at least one song from the book. The track I chose was "The Machine Stops" within a week I was able to play the whole song following the slap, hammer, pop, etc. by Stuart. Then returned to Hideaway, piece of urine. Can now also play Mark Kings fast triplets trick he uses in all his bass solo's all thanks to Stuart Clayton's books. Still can't ever see me being called on to play any of this in a live situation but slap is a really fun technique to learn. For me I always thought that he was a flash git who banged his bass with his left hand while singing, wrong, just take a listen to the tracks when he just plays fingure style and you can learn a lot from his use of ghost notes. To conclude, learn to walk.

[wishface]

I've decided to shelve slapping for the moment. It's not a priority.

I'm not sure what you mean by running before walking here. I never sought to learn the most complicated slap solo right off the bat, initially I was curious how people did the fast stuff because that's something I could never work out. I can do basic slap and pop and have been able to for a while. But that's as far as it goes. Anyway it can wait; the world has enough typewriter slappity slap players as it is - just type in slap bass on youtube!