Slap Guitar 101

everybody in the short video I'm going to try my best to teach you everything that I know about playing slap let's get it gone kind of like what I'm doing now [Music] so let's start from the beginning with the thumb gonna have your thumb and kind of a flick of the wrist and smack it into the strings kinda like with the bone each side but the real hero here is the left hand which is stopping on the other string that I don't want to play from playing [Music] so you'll see now while I'm threading some notes that I went there I also got a finger stopping the other strings muting them from also playing and if I don't do that [Music] not really what we're looking for so I'll find that when I'm playing slap I'm usually concentrating more on the notes that I'm not wanting to play rather than the notes that I do want to but that's not all you can do with the left hand another important part is to use the left hand to get some dead notes here and a dead note is when you're playing a string but you don't get a regular note you just hit it like a drum like I'm doing now I got my index finger going over all the strings and then the other three are just hitting into them you can also get some dead notes with your thumb let's have those in now [Music] that's where you take your finger and your right hand bring it underneath the string and you smack it into the fretboard and it gives you a cool like snare drum sound yeah let's add that in and you don't need to just use it [Music] let's try that now [Music] [Music] is octave so if you're playing an out right here with your index finger two frets over two strings up you got the same note they're just in a higher octave and slap players especially slap bass players will then hit the low note with their thumb and pop the high one done something like this [Music] now let's move on to something that's a bit more geared for the guitar and having strings really close together this is something I call sprinting so instead of having my hand over here my right hand I can bring it into the fretboard I'm still hitting it with my thumb but on the upstroke I'm hitting it with my ring finger someone kind of like this kind of like strumming but a little bit more hectic you can do some different you know rhythms with it it's pretty useful let's added some notes I also like to add in some triplets like that throw that in there I started calling it referring to it as sprinting because it kind of sounds like you know those old cartoons where the character would want to run off screen real quick and their feet would turn into a little tornado kind of sounds like that so back to the octave we were doing earlier you got that the index finger there two frets over two strings up got an octave but more specific to the eighth string and another reason why I love playing slap on the a string is that if you take that same relationship to Front's over bring it all the way to the top you got another octave but now three octaves up [Music] [Music] also instead of just using the top two notes you can use the top three [Music] then going on yeah thanks watching that was a good one yeah I think that's it I think that's it thanks y'all yeah let's go eat some food yeah I think so too I think that's you all the cameras were recording all the audio recording well sweet

Channel: Rob Scallon

Views: 3,054,894

Keywords: Rob Scallon, Slap bass, slap guitar, how to play slap, instrument, music, how to play, pop, guitar, bass, electric bass, funk, les claypool, lesson, guitar lesson, drums, drum lesson, live, how to play bass, how to play slap bass, how to play slap guitar, slap bass, funk bass, thumb, thumbing, popping, bass lesson, guitar and drums, one man band, live shot, live performance, how to play guitar, slap, Victor Wooten, Bootsy, thump, tosin abasi, 8 string, chapman guitars, 8 string guitar

Id: wC9QTHv2eQ4

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Zerocrossing]

Pretty entertaining while also being surprisingly informative. For anyone unfamiliar with slap guitar / bass I can see this actually being useful and inspiring.

He's not kidding about "playing the crap out of your instrument" though. Getting the kind of precision needed to play like this takes a ton of practice.

[u/[deleted]]

Instructions unclear, ended up in an inter-dimensional plane of funk, and fat asses.

[u/[deleted]]

Nice Chapman!

[u/Esham]

Probably going to get downvoted into oblivion but all i heard was primus.

Note i like primus so i will accept downvotes as well for that

[u/azur08]

This is a well-made video

[u/smokeajoint]

Sick!! Chapman guitars, founded by Dorje's frontman Rob Chapman. Big up UK guitars!

[u/kantank-r-us]

This kid is freak, good for him. Savage technique.