Tap and Slap

[wishface]

I feel I should learn to do all this stuff like all the Youtube pros (and non Youtube pros).

I feel as a musician I ought to be able to do this stuff.

Damn you Wooten!

I just wonder if that's practical.

[JamieMillsBass]

If you like it, learn it.  If you don't, don't.  There are a million different ways to be a great bass player.

[wishface]

5 hours ago, JamieMillsBass said:

If you like it, learn it.  If you don't, don't.  There are a million different ways to be a great bass player.

Well that's the sensible answer. I just don't really know how I feel about it. 

Tap - I quite like it, but does it really have much of an application beyond showing off at bass events

Slap - when Larry Graham does it it sounds magic. Whene everyone else does it sounds like a spastic typewriter! Everywhere you go there's peeps doing this on Youtube. Bass is now synonymous with slap. Give me Tony Levin's funk fingers any day

 

I know there's no answer anyone can give for this. It's just there's these super popular techniques - and they have their application if overused (slap). But when I play my bass, I play fingerstyle. That dominates my playing and I love it. So it feels forced, almost, using these other techniques

[Bilbo]

I spent a little bit of time with both of these techniques for the same reason as you give here. I finally realised that I simply don't like the music played using the more advanced elements of these tricks so I left them to rot on the vine. I have never regretted doing so. 

[wishface]

At the risk of getting pretentious, I think this is about identity. I listen to a player like Tony Levin, who IMO is an absolute god. He has played with some of the best musicians out there - and for a reason. But not only that, while he isn't (or certainly doesn't present himself as) a technical monster, he has more originality having pioneered some unique lines and sounds. Funk fingers for instance. Who else could get away with playing with drumsticks strapped to your fingers? I bet if I turned up to a gig like that I'd be laughed out of the building!

But we live in the era of Youtube and so there's a constant background noise from all these wel equipped wunderkind types who have channels playing clips of them having mastered the most complicated technical stuff, all while having only been playing for three months!

It's crazy! No disrespect to them of course.

I've been playing for 30 yeas this year! I'm no pro, probably never will be. I currently play through a cheap guitar practice amp and haven't been in a band in years. Not complaining, just saying. But I love to play and have probably, in comparison, not spent my time as profitably. I've learned a fair bit, but most of it from listening to and playing along with my favourite albums and bands. Developing my own idiosyncrasies. Was years before I even knew how to slap at all. Too bsuy listening to Rush or something. Or trying to figure what the hell a Chapman Stick was.

Anyway that's my sad story, apropos of nothing

[mangotango]

 

On ‎16‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 15:00, JamieMillsBass said:

If you like it, learn it.  If you don't, don't.  There are a million different ways to be a great bass player.

Slap. It's funny; after I came back to playing bass after a long time off, I found that the geography of the technique had changed, and I wasn't sure that I had the roadmap any more.

I saw The Brothers Johnson back in 1978, loved what Louis J. was doing, but didn't think that it was necessarily right for me. At the time for me, Jaco was the king (still is to a huge extent) but at the time I was playing in jazz, noo wave and reggae-influenced bands and adding that kind of thing to my repertoire seemed a bit irrelevant - then.

Move on 30+ years and it's de rigueur in certain music, particularly in the funky jazz thang that I now play, so it's a viable technique for me to introduce. I'm kind of getting there now, a little at least. However, whereas I'm very conscious of certain physical limitations, is there also something else.....??

Sure, Marcus Miller, Stanley Clarke and Mark King are of my era and they slap the hell out of the bass like there's no tomorrow, but it's been part of what they do pretty much as long as they've been doing it.  I'm less sure about my trying to borrow all that wholesale and shoehorn it into my technique, at my time of life. Maybe a little bit here and there is as much as I need.

 

[Muzz]

I've never, ever needed more than a passing familiarity with the techniques (and then only for a couple of covers, things like LVD's Never Too Much and Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al), so I learnt enough to be able to play what I needed to play and moved on with things I am interested in. The virtuosity of Messrs Wooten, Manring, Patitucci, King et al leaves me appreciative of the talent but cold to the effect, and I can't abide bass solos longer than a couple of bars. And then again such virtuosity for virtuosity's sake is a busy playing field these days with, as has been said, the competition of hordes of YouTube players.

The only bassist I can listen to playing solo is Bobby Vega, then again he appeals to me because I'm primarily a pick player, and his pick-funk is just terrific.

As JamieMills said above, there's a million ways to be a great player, and none of them are compulsory...