Here’s a great warm up song on your way to sledgehammer.
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Everything but slapping. Just not my bag of kittens.
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To be honest, I struggle with hitting up against obstacles with the headstock of my bass. Irritates the crap out of me. It’s such a long instrument…
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I feel ya. My wall racks also sometimes mean I’m banging against the ceiling if I get too eager about practice 
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I’ve very well nearly hit the spinning ceiling fan taking off the bass a few times! No hits yet!
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Just put a ding in my Doozey headstock this way last week @kwt7667.
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Haha me too, I live in an old house , the ceiling on the 2nd floor is only 2,2 meters high…got lots of little dents there 
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A friend of mine lives in a windmill. High ceilings, great acoustics … maybe it’s time to move? It’s the Dutch thing to do 
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Hmmm good idea… 
There are a few around here…
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Couple of things I’m finding tricky right now:
Keeping fretboard fingering light when you want to dig in and pluck more powerfully. I find my fretting hand wants to join in and grip harder, it takes some work to keep different pressure in each hand 
I know that just takes practice.
Also - does anyone else’s plucking hand keep traveling down the strings as you play when you’re not paying attention? Any tips for maintaining the hand position?
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The easy one with maintaining your plucking hand position is to anchor your thumb to the pickup. My in person teacher has really pushed this over moving it between strings and it’s working pretty well for me.
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Ah true, I usually like to anchor on the next string but I’ll give this a go 
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To Pick or not to Pick?
Hahaha, don’t get your panties in a bunch, - whatever that means…
The Way - is to have the bass in your lap or hanging from your shoulder and play it using whatever it takes to create the sounds you seek.
Fingers, pick, funk fingers or a frying pan, hehe.
My pickless ways continue, however… Whatever is right for the tone.
ps. the best time to post here in the forum is while resting the fingering hand.
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what do you mean exactly by “traveling down the strings as you play”?
I find it difficult to anchor on the pickups on a lot of basses. Maybe I just have fat thumbs but the tiny bit of plastic from a pickup doesn’t give my thumb much support and ends up feeling uncomfortable so instead of putting my thumb on top of the pickup, I’ll leave it just above my E string but sort of press my thumb horizontally into the side of the pickup. Plus, anchoring here makes it very difficult to mute the E and A strings when playing on the G.
If you find yourself moving your thumb to the E & A strings when playing on D & G that’s totally normal, very common, and a great way to keep the E & A muted. Unless you’re having a hard time resetting back to the pickup or E, I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
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This is a tricky one for your style of playing. We have similar plugging style, more relax which makes Digging into the strings more difficult because it’s effecting the timing. In reality, it’s just that we are more conscious about making that accent which makes you focus more on when, then you start consciously counting and open another can of worm. 
It’s exactly like a golf swing. People who have smooth “swing” will have a tough time “hitting” it hard. the mental word just throws off the timing.
My fix on that is to just play it as it is at first and once you have them down adding hard plugging is just the expression you add to the song, if that makes sense.
Your fretting hand is reacting to the excitement level of your plugging hand, which is normal but once you play that song or phrase a few hundreds time, it will subside.
I have that issue for a long time. Performing live is different, you can do some difficult pass or fills relatively calmly, but that’s not good showing you have to make it look more exciting which mean making it looks harder, and doing that take some practice. 
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Thanks Ant, I actually mean starting plucking nearer the neck then finding myself down by the bridge without meaning to be there 
Not the end of the world, but obviously changes the tone.
And thanks @Al1885 , a tune I’m working on at the moment has lots of more staccato accented notes which is why I’m noticing it, but I’ll keep working on it and hopefully my fretting hand will stop getting so excited
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Ahhh ok, well I’d say the reason you’re probably doing that has something to do with your body subconsciously seeking the “right” string tension.
I used to play near the bridge all of the time and I got so used to that position and feel of the strings that it was hard to adjust to playing closer to the neck where things felt a bit more sloppy. If you have a J bass, anchoring on the neck pickup and forcing yourself to stay there might help!
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The best right hand flow I’ve seen doing covers is @dlamson13, he really understands and utilizes tonal positions. Also @Ant use to play by the bridge on his early covers. I figured it was the string tension preference. I actually asked him about that before 
It’s great to move your hand around for tone manipulation as you don’t want to always be in the same place all the time. From what I see on your covers I don’t think you need to worry about any of those right now you have your fundamentals and playing temperament down. When you have the song down you’ll be loose and kicking butt.
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That is some high praise Al, thanks for the kind words. I do tend to be pretty intentional about where I pluck, it still surprises me sometimes how much tonal variation you can get this way. The one I struggled with at first was playing close to the neck, but now this is one of my favorite sounds, especially on the fretless, very warm sounding.
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Just started to try and tackled Livin on a Prayer… woah…seems WAAAAAY outa my league.
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