How to Slap Bass Part One

Slap bass isn’t the easiest of topics to teach through text and diagrams and can be off putting, but I assure you it can be done if you are willing to put in the effort.

Start Slow

Now the first thing is, when practicing slapping for the first time I recommend only practicing it for no more than 10-15 minutes each day, or when you feel your thumb start to hurt just a little bit. Keep repeating this for the first week or so, because if you don’t your thumb will start to hurt a lot, and blister, and you may not be able to practice it then for a week or two, so you will loose time trying to recover. As you practice it day by day your thumb will gain harder skin and you will be able to play for longer.

Variations

Now let us begin. To start with there are two variations on how to slap. One with your thumb parallel to the strings and one with your thumb facing downwards. Also there are many variations on the two ways to slap. One common way is where you slap on the boney bit of your thumb and you hit the string with your thumb facing downwards. Even though this technique is the easiest to pick up I am not going to teach you this way. The simple reasons are that it can be messy as you have to mute the strings you don’t want to hit, also it’s hard to get it precise. The other reason is that the other way when learned correctly is more efficient and you can go twice as fast as the other technique.

Now the technique I am going to show you is called double thumb slapping, because as you hit your thumb down through the string you hit it on the way up as well. You are getting two hits but with the other way you would only get one hit. This is a similar technique used by bassists who alternate pick with a pick. This technique was mastered by Victor Wooten who invented this to my knowledge.

Slapping

• You want to hit the string with the end of your thumb (the fleshy bit near the end of your nail, not the hard boney bit), as you do on the other slap technique.

•The region for slapping should at the end of the fretboard. You want to actually slap the strings off the fretboard not on the fretboard.

 •Your thumb wants to be parallel to the strings. Although you may have seen a lot of bassist with there thumb down I assure you that this way I am teaching you will benefit you a lot.

•Your thumb wants to be at an angel towards yourself as seen in the diagram below. You may wish to have your thumb more angled than, or less angled than in the diagram. Just find the easiest for you.