"Or you create a subscription-only twenty part course looking purely at slap techniques."
Even that could not advance my non-existent slap capabilities! And believe me I've tried. I remember asking my former bass teacher Lothar about teaching me some slap in 1979 and he laughed
"There is nothing to learn there, just do it." Well, that never worked for me
, I still sound like a strangled chicken whenever I attempt slaps and pops. I'm neither accurate enough to hit the strings properly (not even the E string) nor fast enough to get away from them in time for them to ring (same with tapping by the way).
But Lothar taught me the circle of fifths and lots of scales - for that I'm eternally grateful! My melodic and harmonic grasp of bass is great, it's just that no one gives a rat's ass about those skills! (No one has ever said to me: "
Oh, you connected those chords wonderfully, Uwe, using root notes only sparingly!" or "
That's really neat how you play a descending chromatic run of E, D#, D + C# to the E Major, B Major, E Major, A Major chord sequence of the Stones' Satisfaction bridge!")
To this day, it turns my stomach when someone says "
Yeah, do a bass solo there!" and sees that as a synonym for a couple of random slap bass licks while the band stops playing. Yet when I go, "
No, you guys keep playing and provide the harmonies and I'll solo a melody over it!", I get incredulous looks and a "
But that's NO BASS SOLO!".
People always think that I refuse to slap because I consider it beneath me and just want to be different, yet little do they know ...
