Bill Clements

Obsessed with Geddy Lee, Jaco Pastorius, and the bass itself, Clements quickly developed a left-handed tapping technique, jumped right back into the local scene, and has been flying over the fingerboard ever since. Due to his physical circumstances, the garrulous Clements has a unique perspective on how to make your left hand as potent as possible.

How do you keep your left hand in shape and progressing?

I practice obsessively, and for me, playing is in and of itself a strength exercise. Trying to maintain fast 16th-notes non-stop for 16 or more bars with a metronome is also a good thing to do. For incorporating new techniques, I’ll start out with a fast melodic idea that I know I can’t perform, and then I’ll woodshed it until it creeps its way into my playing without me even being conscious of it. Much of what I do with my bands is completely improvisational, so there’s a lot of laboratory time onstage for me to play through many versions—any concept I can come up with.

How did you adjust to playing after your accident?

I had to adjust to doing everything solely with my left hand, not just playing bass. My whole physical philosophy became different. I was determined not to play a rudimentary style after the accident, because I hadn’t done so before, even though it wasn’t realistic for me to be able to play like my heroes—for example, Level 42’s Mark King—with just one hand. I used to do a lot of fast octave slapping like King, so I figured out a technique that would approximate it. But while I could live without slapping, I didn’t want to give up my ghosted 16th-note vibe, so I developed a muting technique where I use my 1st and 3rd fingers a whole step apart. That comes from my love of Jaco Pastorius and Tower Of Power’s Rocco Prestia, who have that dead-note component to their playing. That effect adds a different dimension and propels the groove. As memory serves, for a two-handed player, the most important thing with muting is the interdependence between both hands; it’s almost like playing ping-pong against yourself.

Aside from just practicing, how could somebody figure out how to tap?

Get a video on playing the tabla. The way a tabla player makes contact with his drumheads is analogous to the way I make contact with the bass strings. You couldn’t really figure out anything by watching me on a video, because when I’m filmed, it looks like the music isn’t synced up with my hand. I’ve been told that there’s an Internet site theorizing that I’m a hoax, that there’s no way I can possibly be doing what I’m doing, that I actually have two hands. But I just want the musical component of my playing to stand on its own, regardless of whatever hard-luck story I might have.