Bass Edu
Victor Wooten’s Sex in a Pan
A full tutorial on Victor Wooten’s Sex in a Pan!
Anybody who does not know Vic? Okay… So you have also read my report on Vic’s Workshop and now you’ll see a full tutorial on Sex in a Pan, one of my favorites from him. Instead of making more short videos, now I decided to make one longer vid and break down the major parts of the whole song – so here it is! Enjoy it!
This song reflects the natural playfulness and the joyful wisdom of Vic himself while really making your ass move to it… it is THE flow 🙂 To be honest, while the song is quite techincal in a way, I cannot really think (or talk) about it that way, it is more like a feeling : )When you first try to play it, it will feel like juggling – coordinating all the fingers together to make it flow and feel good takes some practice but the more you do it, the more you enjoy it, and the better you play.
Trust me, learning this piece is a real therapy experience 🙂 The therapy includes little tapping, playing chords and double-stops, using dead, muted and accented notes, using that many fingers on your hands you never used before, intense left hand hammering, light slapping with double-thumbing.
The intro… besides the big stretch and the sliding right hand middle finger tap, there is one more thing to the intro part: the harmonics are hard to get when you release the right middle finger – your left hand has to fret two notes and just hover over some notes on the G string so lifting your right middle finger will produce the desired harmonic note… so it is kind of tricky, Vic magically brings them ringing everytime but well, if you can live without it just do so 🙂
The verse… the fun part. All of it is played sort of palm muted, for that, just place the side of your hand towards the bridge and play like that.When you play this groove, think of space and let the open strings breath and when your left hand has to hammer that 7th fret on the E string – be gentle and do not choke that open string too early. Otherwise – happy jugglin with all your fingers 🙂 On the notation – P means the thumb, I means the index finger, M means the middle finger, T means right hand tap. On the left hand: 1 means left hand index, 4 means left hand pinky and when you can see those, usually you do not have to pick that note with your right hand!. Hope you can sort it out while watching it 🙂
The refrain… further finger coordination, and sliding double-stops. In the tab, you can see rest after the first slide, but note that there is a rhytmic right hand tap on the vide – I have seen Vic play that live sometimes.
The break in G… another fun part – I am still trying to figure out the descending pattern that Vic does recently but until then, here is how I think he played it on the record. Not as many right hand slap as you would think – that’s a good left hand finger-strengthener with the hammer-ons 🙂
So, if you reached that level, you are ready for the last part, the slap-style variation on the verse: if you watch Vic live, this part is played with a very light slapping-thumbing sort of playing – note that on the G and D string he uses double-thump style slapping while on the E and A string he only goes down with his thumb – it is barely slapping and it is a very natural motion – remember the economy of motion that all those pro players talk about!
So that’s it: if you have further questions, just shoot in the comments!
The video does not intend to violate any laws or copyrights, it is to be used for educational purposes (fair use). The original song is available for purchase and listening at:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/greatest-hits-20th-century/id358187446
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For members, here is the GuitarPro5 file!