How To Play Slap Bass #1 - Getting Started

hi again mark here from talking bass net my last lesson covered some more advanced slap techniques but this week I'm going to go over the basics and how to get started with the thumb now first things first what is slapping well slapping is a BIST technique going way back but it was first brought to mass appeal by Larry Graham from Sly and the Family Stone because of this funk history it's mainly been seen as a funk technique but it's actually used in many many different styles the general idea behind slap bass revolves around using the thumb to hit and bounce off the strings instead of using the fingers or a plectrum to pluck the string this makes the string hit against the frets in results in the famous bright slapped on now there's many many different ways you can hit with the thumb to get this sound but we'll stick with one of them for now and I'll expand on some of the variations later so now let's have a go at a simple slap you want to hold your hand in a loose clenched fist with your thumb extended as if you're given the thumbs up to a mate now before we hit the string have a go at just rotating the hand from the wrist and forearm like this you want to flick the thumb and then back to starting position be nil in out with the arm it's all in the wrist so try a quick back and forth and try loosening your hand a little bit to get a bit more speed and you want to be loose in the forearm as well now let's try hitting an open E string you want to hit it just around the end of the neck around this area and remember you don't want to move the arm in and out like this it's more of a flick and a rotation of the wrist like this so okay you don't want to hit the string too hard and just flail away you want feeling control of the thumb so that you're not hitting any of the other strings of making lots of unwanted noise like this you know you should get a chime as you hit the string and then the regular decay of the note just past the end of the neck is usually a good place to hit the string but you can slap all over the neck or further back depending on your personal preference so you can kind of get that chime anywhere along there so right now if you're a fan of many slap bass players you might be thinking that doesn't sound right that's just like a normal finger plug but louder well that's because a lot of the slap sound comes from how we choke and mute the note when I first tried slapping I find it really really difficult to get the slapped tone that I'd heard from all these big-name players like Mark King but eventually a few things began to make censors are practiced more and more first of all it helps to have new strings these are unfortunately a little a little old and I was open to up some new ones for filming today but I've ordered them online and they've not arrived yet so anyway these are these are still bright enough to get a fairly good ring out of them if you have really old dead strings you might find it a little easier to get into this style by simply buying a fresh set once you get a little better it won't matter as much but you don't want to get disheartened from the start next it's worth paying attention to your tone controls and pickup configuration if you have a jazz bass like this then make sure that you have both pickups on full volume and the tone of maximum the pickup setup isn't too important but you'll get around a turn this way so here's a comparison between the two pickups this is both open okay here's the bridge pickup and here's the neck pickup now back to both okay now let's try the open E string again but this time we're going to cut the note short with the fretting hand just play the note and then stop the string with the palm of the hand like this now try it a little bit shorter and a little shorter or really short staccato this controlling of the note duration is really important in getting a good slap tone so now let's try the same choking technique but with a different note we want to fret the G the third fret on the E string and slap and then hold the note so we're holding for the full duration now try playing that Senji buttplate shorter like this to do this you want to release pressure on the note and use the other fingers of the hand to choke the string like we did with the open string so if we just release the pressure so just take the finger off slightly but keep it there keep it in place but just release the pressure so that you're not touching the wood you'll get this now you can hear a little bit of a of a ring afterwards as the harmonic rings out so now try choking that note with the remaining fingers of the hand trick is to hit with the hand at the same time as releasing the pressure so it's all one motion a little quicker okay now let's try slapping the a string let's try the open air first in various no durations so that's held little quicker very staccato okay now let's try a C third fret on the a string and we'll try all the different durations again so that's fully held see you're choking the string and releasing the pressure okay so let's try a really simple progression to work through with a basic rhythmic pattern this is going to be in the key of G and we're going to move through the notes G B C and D one bar each in four-four with the following rhythm okay so with each not G B C D back okay try to control the length of each note accurately remember there's two longer notes and a shorter one to take care of notice how I moved my handle to take care of the choking on the D here I'll stay in one position without moving and use the little finger to play the D and simply release pressure on it for the choking there's no need to use the whole handing control the note all the time okay so this is all in one position okay so I use the little finger for the D now let's try an exercise that you can use to experiment with different amounts of choking while crossing the strings this is a basic G major scale pattern and save time I'll just refer you to the tab and sheet music PDF available in the comments below that's for the fingering of the G Major scale just in case you don't know it simply play up this scale and back down slapping every note first of all allow each note to ring for the whole duration like this and then try progressively short durations notice how i'm just releasing pressure on each note to put the note shot and choke it okay and a really short staccato gyration okay and then you can build up speed if you want to okay now once you've mastered the exercise you know you'll want to build up the speed for it but remember that we're not going for speed just yet we're simply trying to get the articulation correct it's better to play at a slower tempo and really nail the amount of note variation you can get while keeping a clean sound so as a follow up exercise for the thumb try slapping pretty much anything that you already play different riffs scales arpeggios runs anything it'll build up NextEra T in the thumb and the suppleness of the wrist I never concentrated on the thumb in isolation when I first started I just went straight for banging out octaves with both slapping and popping I should have spent more time developing my thumb control first because I found it really difficult to progress now let's move on to popping to do this we just took the first or second finger of the slapping hand under the string and pop it out like this you don't need to pull it right out like this just pull it enough to get a sharp pop sound I tend to almost use the side edge of my finger and I always use the first finger when I first tried popping I used my second finger and I popped straight out like this but I found that I used to have this strange reaction to it and felt really uncomfortable so if you have any problems just alter your technique accordingly it must work fine for other players like flee because he really pops hard so if you want to use your second finger that's fine now let's try an octave pattern so that we can try out the combination of the slap and pop technique try the C octave with the third fret on the a string and the fifth fret of the g string and just try the following exercise holding the notes for the full duration so you want to slap the a string and pop the g string so now a little short duration and now really shots the cutter now let's try the same pattern but using the octave G on the E and the D string for some reason I found the E and E string octave patterns really tough when I first started and I couldn't seem to get my popping finger in between the D and the g string there in time now the key to this is to keep the is to drop the finger down under the D string at the same time that you slap like this so as you come in the finger comes out under the D string okay now let's try a really cliched disco groove starting on the D on the air string and coming back up from the B so the octaves will be D B C C sharp and D again and round it round okay so first of all we'll try it with the full held durations okay and now a little shorter now really shot now try it just holding the slap note but cutting the pop shot and you'll notice how the feel of it changes depending on how the energy raishin works out now try the same pattern but starting on the a on the E string so we'll be using the E string D string is the octave pan so this is a f-sharp G g-sharp a f-sharp G g-sharp okay you may have seen a few other ways of slapping the bass particularly the thumb down style like flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and slap slap I started out with this technique but soon changed to thumb up because it's a little bit easier when trying out some of the more advanced techniques like double thumb pin and stuff like that but it obviously works for flea and thousands and millions of others so if you want to have a go at playing with your thumb down then just go for it now I'll leave it there for this lesson because that's enough to get started with the technique itself and I could easily go overboard with the length of this lesson so next time I'll cover some rhythms to work on with the slap pop combination and we can look at a few basic riffs and some famous examples too so as always please like this video and subscribe to my channel and remember to also visit w-w-w dot oakum base for more of my videos and blog postings on all things bass okay see you later

Channel: TalkingBass - Online Bass Lessons

Views: 731,197

Rating: 4.9480391 out of 5

Keywords: Slapping, slap bass, Bass Guitar (Musical Instrument), marcus miller, mark king, flea, stu hamm, Larry Graham (Musical Artist), Fender Jazz Bass (Product Line), thumb technique, bass technique, slap and pop, Sly & The Family Stone (Musical Group), Red Hot Chili Peppers (Musical Group)

Id: tGilCW0_Jf0

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 02 2013