if you want to see me slap, this is your first and maybe your last chance !
Duck Tales theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x-L04T8mPw
When I was a kid, I was a big fan of Duck Tales. I like especially the video game on NES (and I still can finish this game one-credit one-life, even when I’m drunk), and I always liked this theme song. So, I guess it was the good day to give it a try as a cover …
I have very low experience with slap, actually not much more than the module on the B2B course. Also I must say that I have a very low interest in all the slap-thing, in general. Slap just has nothing to do with the musical styles I’m in. Slap with sludgecore ? nope. Slap with dark country ? double-nope. So, this song has been really challenging for me, as I was far from my comfort zone, and playing with this technique took some time.
That said, I think that it’s always a good thing to know different techniques, to bring a wider expression panel to our bass playing ; so those hours of work are not lost nor useless.
The SBV works well with slap, and the scooped-but-warm tone with the two pickups in parallel works fine for this. Also I used the DOD FX84 compressor, in front of the Bass POD Pro set on the Ampeg SVT model. probably not the ideal amp for slap, even if I like this bass tone, but I’m very used to it and I like to have some kind of consistency between the various bass tones I use (which are in fact variations around the very same base tone).
I tuned the SBV to Eb-Std, even if the song is in E. it might seems strange and counter-intuitive, but the reason is that I much prefer the fingering in Eb, as it allows me a more natural muting. I could never encourage too much to try alternate tunings.