I am having all these problems lol. I think I’ll wait until Module 13… and even if I sorta manage it, the other strings are ringing all over the place or I just outright touch them XD It’s like I suddenly have no idea how to mute strings. I am going super slow and have absolutely no accuracy on the initial strike using “thumbs up” and no matter what I do, as soon as I start fretting I just get harmonics. For the first time I actually find myself being frustrated; this is going to be a very slow technique for me to learn
Edit I should add, the action on my bass is low, too.
Edit 2 Well, after just a few minutes I was nailing the opening strain to Pearl Jam’s Jeremy slap-style about 40-50% of the time. So my spirits are back up lol. As far as the thumb ring, to my knowledge the ones that use one do so for the tone itself.
Okay, so I really went into this for 10 minutes or so and things just started to gel. I still need work on the D and G strings, but I’m pretty confident on the E and A strings, now. My knuckles of the slapping hand do even brush the other strings, but it was like my muting suddenly went “oh, this is how we do” and I was mostly just getting the notes I wanted to on the frets I wanted to.
However, the neck pickup on my Schecter is too close to the neck, and just in the right place for the joint/knuckle right there at the palm to hit the edge/corner of it so I need to adjust even more, or just slap on a bass with the neck pickup further back (it’s “3 fingers” away on my Stiletto)
I think that’s to protect his thumb from damage? Someone on TalkBass mentioned a few people that did the same for that reason. I don’t know if this person’s name came up or not, now that I type this all out…
Hey sorry to dig up an old thread but reading through this and watching Josh’s video below I have a question about slapping the S* out of my strings. I seem to be banging the strings off of the pickup even at what I think is a moderate slap level and it sounds like crap.
I mean I’m a big dude with giant sausage fingers but I doubt the force I generate is more than what I’ve seen in some videos. So my question is what am I doing wrong? or is “hard” slapping really just theatrics and they are just controlling the power of the slap at the last second?
I just found this from SBL (don’t worry it’s a short). But this was the other question. I see lots of folks bouncing off of the strings but when I watch the crazy folks they seem to be slapping through like Scott describes rather than slapping on.
RE:hitting the pickup - sounds like the pickup height needs to be lower, I’ve had that issue on poorly setup basses.
You can also “solve” this problem by doing the ‘strikethrough’ slap instead of the bounce, because you’re changing the axis of motion a bit.
RE:strikethrough vs bounce slap - they’re both good techniques that give slightly different results. In my strong opinion we shouldn’t be calling the bounce slap a “mistake” or calling strikethrough a “solution”, they’re just different. Try getting a Flea or Louis Johnson brutal slap sound out of strikethrough - there’s just not enough force for the badassery. Strikethrough is great for more restrained technical slapping, but… diff tools for diff jobs. Personally I do all bounce, unless I’m double thumbing.
Right now slap is sort of a novelty for me but as a beginner there are all of these questions about my hand size, are my pickups too close, are they using pedals like a compressor to even out between slaps and pops, do people really glue their thumbs back together when “slap happens”?
But I also hear a part of me saying, “dude just go practice the @#$* you are actually going to use”.
and even if I sorta manage it, the other strings are ringing all over the place or I just outright touch them XD It’s like I suddenly have no idea how to mute strings. I am going super slow and have absolutely no accuracy on the initial strike using “thumbs up” and no matter what I do, as soon as I start fretting I just get harmonics. For the first time I actually find myself being frustrated; this is going to be a very slow technique for me to learn 
so I need to adjust even more, or just slap on a bass with the neck pickup further back (it’s “3 fingers” away on my Stiletto)
