there are actual isolated studio recorded bass tracks for some songs on youtube which are amazing, but for most tunes the free splitters like moises will be the option
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Except for sliding, I struggle with palm mutes WHILE playing a note (that is what P.M. means, right?), for example:
This is just an example (“Come on over” by Royal Blood) - which I cannot play anyway for many other reasons (mainly because I am a bloody beginner).
But I encounter those kind of palm mutes on a regular basis in other/simpler songs. My sensomotorical skills get quite overwhelmed by plucking, fretting and muting at the same time.
I often go into a catatonic mode, crumbling on the floor while sucking my thumb and humming “Mary had a little lamb” when I encounter PMs…
Any advice how to do stuff like that??!
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X is a ghost note, played with your fretting finger lightly touching the string but not pushing down, gives you a light thud vs a ringing note. Takes a bit to perfect this. Many YouTube tutorials, Josh must have one somewhere as well.
Never seen P.M. before.
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Just forget the palm muting in the bgeinning, and concentrate on normal picking technique.
Also, while palm muting is a thing when using a Pick, the technique isn’t really a thing playing finger style.
I have seen someone emulate palm muting with finger style by using the pinky of the plucking hand, but also don’t worry about that in the beginnimg.
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Cool - forgetting about things is my superpower!
Also, I don’t wanna play with a pick currently, not on bass anyway. I am doing that while learning a little guitar (just to understand chords better) and my pick is all over the place (sometimes it even leaves my fingers) - but not where it belongs.
So … can I just play the muted notes as unmuted or just ignore them?
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Julia’s got your back 
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I wish 
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I’ve also seen palm muting done while plucking with the thumb and index finger like they were playing a guitar
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Palm muting is definitely a time-honored guitar fingerstyle technique. Muting the sixth and fifth strings to get a thuddy alternating bass line with thumb picking has been widely used by Delta and Texas blues pioneers in many classic Country Blues tunes (not to be confused with what is now known as country music 
).
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I’m sure this is a thing! And I’m also sure that some songs are an accurate transcription of the original song but possibly too accurate. By that I mean that, for example, in the cover I did recently there were a number of bars that were repeated several times through the song in essentially the same position in different phrases that were so slightly different I’d bet they would be different again the next time that person played it. So in this case there is a pause followed by a note and sometimes the pause is little longer and the following note a little shorter or vice versa. This is with the same bar being played in the same place in different verses. You have to listen really hard to hear the difference and I can only make it out by listing to the separated bass track and having those two bars playing back to back… To me trying to mimic this sort of difference exactly smacks of pure OCD. And if someone tells me it’s enough to change the mood of the music, I’m afraid I’d have to respectfully disagree! 
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When I went to learn Boom Boom Boom by John lee Hooker, I listened to a bunch of performances, and no two were alike, each bassist played their own walking line.
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Which really is kind of like it should be. People often forget that an awful lot of classical music is intended to be improvised around the original score.
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I had forgotten that but it’s true
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So, it turns out that cool sounding slides are very easy on my long scale ESP LTD B-4E, but almost impossible on my tiny Blackstar Traveler Bass.
I’m sliding like the penguin in Fight Club now
I ask myself: why is that? Why do I have trouble on my very very very short string bass?
Is it a) the shorter strings, b) the higher tension or c) perhaps the combination of nut action height and bridge action height (theorie: lower is better for slides???!)
Can I get my Blackstar to slide liky my ESP? How?
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Similar issue with my Blackstar travel.
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@jeffw - so you own the Blackstar Bass too? Cool! We are one in a million
I only consider it an issue if it can’t be solved. So let’s hope for the superpowers of our fellow bassBuzzers!
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Well, I’m by no means any kind of expert, so I’m theorising but I would guess
I didn’t realise just how short scale these are lol, does that mean shorter slides? So probably also slower than usual?
Looking at the specs, 65-125 guage strings, are similar to what would go on a regular 34" scale for BEAD tuning, so yeah, I guess the tension on a shorter scale would mean you’d have to use more pressure than usual? 
Lower would be better, for less pressure again?
Mainly a combination of b & c if I had to guess
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Well, the Blackstar has a really short scale length of 596mm - that is about 0.314159 ounce-feet-gallons in US denomination, right?
So it’s short, yeah! In fact it should be FASTER to slide, as you don’t have to cover large distances while sliding, at least in a metric universe ^^
Yes, I need to apply more pressure, compared to the ESP. I am still experimenting with string height to counteract - getting that as low as possible without buzzing. That is why I installed an ABM 6240 nut.
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