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I'm Marc the Bass Wizard with TheBassWizard.com and this is the #1 Mistake people make when
it comes to playing Slap Bass.I mostly see this with people who are either Self-taught
or people who had a really bad teacher who didn't know what they were talking about.
You have to be really careful with that because when you're looking for a teacher you have
to find someone who is really qualified and is a bass player and really understand and
knows this instrument and knows what they're talking about, because there's a lot of guitar
players out there that think "Oh I can play bass" and they're looking to make a quick
buck, so they'll take on bass students and teach them. But a lot of times, they era;;y
don't know what they're doing and they'll teach you technique that's incorrect. The
problem with that is that if you learn wrong technique early on, you're going to develop
bad habits on the instrument that are going to hurt you down the line and bad habits are
really tough to break because if you've been playing a certain way for years and all of
a sudden someone comes to you and tells you "Oh that's actually not how you should be
playing, you be playing like this", it's going to be very hard to change because you're on
autopilot at that point, you're not thinking about what you're doing,y you're just picking
up the bass and playing like you always have been playing. You're past that stage where
you're learning the technique and you're practicing it and trying to make it second nature, it
is second nature to you at that point, but it's wrong. That mistake is, people who play
Slap Bass with their thumbs down like this. I'm sure you've seen that, maybe you're one
of those guys doing that right now. And you may be thinking "Why is that wrong? It sounds
right...", and you're right, it can work.. but when you get to a point where you're looking
to take your slap bass playing to the next level and you're listening to guys like Marcus
Miller, and maybe you want to play a song like Power by Marcus Miller which is...
That line right there uses a technique that is called Double-Thumbing and basically that
technique is going down with you're thumb and then going up. If you're playing like
this, you can already see what the problem is, you can't go down-up because you're not
even going down, you're just bouncing off the string, you have no option of going down-up.
So you can't incorporate double-thumbing into this technique. If you've been doing a long
time, believe me I've had a lot of students in this position doing this, and you tell
them that actually you should be playing like this, keeping you're thumb parallel to the
string and going through the string, getting into the habit of going through the string
so you can come back up. That's a very hard transition to make if you've been doing this
for years and you're in that autopilot mode where this is just how you play, that's really
hard to change.
So if you're making that mistake right now, try to correct that. Keep your thumb parallel
to the string and go through the string. So that when you get to a more advanced level
and you're trying to incorporate the double-thumbing, that's going to be a very easy transition
for you.
If you're looking for more tips, if you're looking to learn Slap Bass, if you're a beginner
or intermediate trying to take your playing to the next level, make sure you check out
my Slap Bass Mastery Course by clicking the link either in this video or in the description
box. That's it for today I'll see you guys next time. Thanks.