Wondering how to improve my chugging sound.
When I chug quickly the sound is very staccato… thump thump thump, instead of smooth sound (dumm dumm dumm).
If I was playing a piano I would use the sustain peddle to help blend the notes to smooth them together.
Is there a way to smooth the plucks thru finger technique or some other technique? Is there a bass equivalent to a piano sustain peddle?
Not sure how to upload video example 
First thing first to upload the video is to upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo then Post the link.
Good question! I am working on a chugger at the moment. I think I sort of sound staccato too or something that I can’t explain.
For me I wonder if I am playing to fast and that my mind is not processing fast enough and that I end up lagging and then speeding up to catch up.
I am looking forward to the responses.
Thanks… I’ll upload.
btw… moving to SoCal from east coast in about a month. Looking forward to good weather 
Moving, awesome. Where in SoCal?
Ventura county somewhere… haven’t found a place yet… but looking in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo area.
Any recos?
Here is link to …Clunky chugging
Cool. I used to have a restaurant practically across the street from Ventura City Hall, nice area.
I like food 
I can upload the whole video if useful but the chug is at the end which I snipped a bit.
Maybe it’s to do with your fretting hand. Sometimes I deliberately want staccato, so I rhythmically lift my fretting hand in ‘opposition’ to my plucking action, i.e. muting the note immediately after I strike the string. When I don’t want the staccato, I’ll simply keep my fretting hand still, obviously apart from changing notes.
Yes your fretting hand. It controls the duration of the notes. Funny I just posted this cover video today.
Lots of Staccato and ghost notes as well as 8th and 16th. Your left fingers control the notes value most of the time.
Thank you. I’ll pay more attention to my fretting to confirm I’m holding pressure…
. I’ll try fretting it more firmly.
Firmly? No try less. Good things happen when you try less.
You want to practice technical stuffs really really slowly and very gradually increase the pace.
Check this out. Look how little effort Nick put on playing. That doesn’t come from trying harder but the opposite. The hardest note he tried was the last one and it didn’t sound right and that’s intentional 
Ahh… thank you for this.
Counterintuitive to me as I thought if I went lighter it would dampen the string more.
When I chug slow it does sound much more smooth and blended. Around 110 BPM on the metronome is when it’s starts to sound thumpy.
I’ll play with varying pressure.
Thank you 
Less is more! YES. I push to hard. Don’t know why-maybe a control coordination thing, learning the feel. Don’t know. I end up realizing when I see blood on my fret board that I probably don’t need to be fretting that hard. 
I am probably biting my tongue too as I learn to play.
You’re cookin’, @Al1885! Beautiful.
I had same problem.
I found consciously breathing and smiling while playing helped relax me (for a while I was wearing a bite guard to not grit teeth 
).
Also mental note I made was I enjoy playing more relaxed… and that’s kinda the point 
.
Well, this is a funny concept, but it’s proven. If you play golf you’d know it for sure. There’s a saying in golf, rule number one, You have to try hard not to try hard.
It’s a reason why Dr Strange was talking about Chuck Mangione “Feel so good” during the brain surgery instead of focus 100% on the surgery. This is not the movie stuff, it happens in every OR in the world.
You know how hard it is to walk down the street if you have to focus on putting one foot in front of another while breathing and scan for terrain on top of staying balance. Put it to the max, you can add a chewing gum, 
The idea is to practice slow and repeat till you can do it in your sleep, and the autopilot will take over.