Tips for Playing Slap Bass With a Drummer

Video Transcript

"I am Carl Shepard, professional bass instructor and here I am going to explain some reasons behind different techniques. Slapping is something that is kind of percussive and when you do that in addition to having a drummer with you, you can add to a percussive field, lot of disco songs use slapping. There are different funk bands that use it and really when you switch from just using your fingers to using your thumb, it gives you more of a presence and more of a treble gain to the notes. There are things you can do with you fingers that you can’t do with your thumb however and a lot of that comes with grooving with your drummer and being able to find places where you can mute and use the mute technique to really start to add to what the drummer is doing. The slap and plucking sound can be mimicked as a bass hit and a snare hit, so when your drummer is using the bass the kick drum, you know you want to slap on that and then pluck where the snare is coming in, a lot other things you can do with picking come with mute. You can get a sound in there that almost mimics the bass drum, so in between notes you can use a little bit of mute to get more of a groove and help the drummer out and he’ll be feeling you better too. "