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Slap, for people who don't like slap.


Beer of the Bass
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I'm not a big slap bass fan (meaning electric bass slap, not double bass.), but I feel like I ought to be able to do a bit if a band asks for it. During a band rehearsal yesterday, the drummer suggested some slap bass on one particular tune, I tried it and realised I could do with working on it a little. I practice fingerstyle and pick playing, and just want to add some basic slap to my arsenal.
I don't like the flash, saturday morning music shop associations, and things like Level 42 are really not my bag, though I won't put them down, as musical tastes are a subjective thing. I don't mind certain types of slap groove though, especially where it's not shouting "look at me!".
With that in mind, where can I find some material to help me get the basic techniques down? A book, online video tutorial or anything else would do it.

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this will probably be reiterating something you already know as it's somewhat the gold standard in slap training but you might check tony oppenheim's slap it!

i'm not a big fan of slapping myself but this is quite useful and i could even say i like both playing the examples and the way they sound. you can find some samples at [url="http://www.slapit.com/"]http://www.slapit.com/[/url]

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[quote name='pumkinkin' post='1027078' date='Nov 17 2010, 05:02 PM']this will probably be reiterating something you already know as it's somewhat the gold standard in slap training but you might check t[b]ony oppenheim's slap it! [/b]

i'm not a big fan of slapping myself but this is quite useful and i could even say i like both playing the examples and the way they sound. you can find some samples at [url="http://www.slapit.com/"]http://www.slapit.com/[/url][/quote]


+1
Its been around for years, great stuff.


Garry

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Another thing you could try is to play the root with your thumb in a real old school thumbstyle and then pop the octave in the more usual slap and pop technique. Pino does this, albeit without too much snap, [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_zRDchkDXg"]see this[/url] from about 30 secs onwards. I'm going to try it with my band on Higher Ground as I don't want to replicate the RHCP version, but keep the general feel, plus I'm no Flea. Just a thought.

Edited by ezbass
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This dvd here:

[url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ed-Friedland-Slap-Ultimate-Guide/dp/B00008G90O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290373667&sr=1-1"]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ed-Friedland-Slap-...3667&sr=1-1[/url]



It's by Ed Friedland, who is an absolutely fantastic player, and it goes right from the basic form of the techniques all the way up to the fancy stuff with a few tricky lines! I bought it a few years ago and it really revitalised my slap playing as it brought me back to basics and made me focus on raising the standard from the ground up.

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  • 1 year later...

I've started by looking at the examples from slapit.com. I created a simple drumbeat in Logic with sixteenth notes on the hi hat, kick at 1 and 3 and snare at 2 and 4.
Then i set the tempo to 30 and started to play the lick until I could play it REALLY CLEAN for maybe ten times and then recorded a few loops of the lick. This was a great way of finding bad sounding parts and try to correct them. When everything sounded great i increased the tempo a little bit and repeated the process. First i increased in steps of ten and then reducing the step size as the tempo increased. Above 70 or 80 i did only increments in steps of maybe 3 bpm.

After a while I could play the licks in a fairly high tempo with good clean technique and it was really fun!

When my slap technique gets better I could probably be bit less rigorous with the method though and maybe start at higher tempos and/or increase the tempo with bigger increments.

I'm also realising I'm much more partial to the soloed neck pickup slap sound. I'm getting more and more convinced of going towards a P-style bass... :)

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[quote name='JakeBrownBass' timestamp='1326594638' post='1499404']
Practice slowly with a metronome. So many bass players play out of time when playing slap because they're concentrating more on technique than timing, feel & tone.
[/quote]
+1
If people ask me if i can play slap i say no. i can do some stuff but my timing goes out so i dont think i can play funk at all.

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[quote name='Chris2112' timestamp='1290373762' post='1031906']
This dvd here:

[url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ed-Friedland-Slap-Ultimate-Guide/dp/B00008G90O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290373667&sr=1-1"]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ed-Friedland-Slap-...3667&sr=1-1[/url]



It's by Ed Friedland, who is an absolutely fantastic player, and it goes right from the basic form of the techniques all the way up to the fancy stuff with a few tricky lines! I bought it a few years ago and it really revitalised my slap playing as it brought me back to basics and made me focus on raising the standard from the ground up.
[/quote]

I found it went straight from really really basic straight to super fast wa**ery with nothing inbetween. You can have my copy if you want.

Edit: I mean the OP can have my copy, not Chris2112 as I'm sure he already has it!

Edited by chaypup
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