How to Slap Bass Part 2

Your thumb should remain loose and move with your wrist as you hit the strings. Your arm should remain straight, and only move as you move down the strings. You also want to twist your wrist downwards towards yourself as you slap.

Now let’s start on the E string. You want to hit the E string, and land on the A string, so you want to go through the E to land on the A as you would with a pick. You want your thumb about 2-3 inches above the string you want to hit. This is because you need to build up some power to hit the string.
 

 When you've landed on the A string you want to leave your thumb there. You don't want to bounce off the string but instead go through the E to land on the A. Now at first you won't get this, and you will get really frustrated, but it will come. It took me several months to get it properly so just keep with it.

When you land on the A string you want to bring your thumb up thought the E so the string comes in contact with your nail. Twist you wrist upwards with your thumb and then your thumb should catch under the string and pop the string. It’s like popping with your thumb but just not as hard. Hopefully with practice you will get this. As you can see in the diagram below you need quite a fair bit of your thumb underneath the string.

 You want to get the sounds of the up and down popping at the same level. You don’t want one to sound louder that the other.

At first you want to practice just hitting the open E string up and down. This will take you a while just to get this down if you are new to the style.

 G|----------------|
 D|----------------|
 A|----------------|
 E|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0|
           
Then try other open strings and again take your time and don’t move onto the next exercise until you are comfortable with playing the previous one.

 G|------------------------------0-0-0-0--|
 D|--------------------0-0-0-0------------|
 A|-----------0-0-0-0---------------------|
 E|-0-0-0-0-------------------------------|
         
There are many variations that can be done. The following is a good one to learn but is a bit tricky.

 G|------------0-0----0-0------------|
 D|---------0-0-----------0-0--------|
 A|-----0-0------------------0-0-----|
 E|-0-0-------------------------0-0--|
         
Just because I am using open strings doesn’t mean that you can’t use other notes, but most slapping is based around the open E string as it sounds good and there is a lot to work with. Slap basslines are commonly based around octaves too. To use octaves you need to know how to pop first. Read my lesson on popping.