FOLLOW US ON:
0 Cart £0.00

Introduction

This video course contains 100 exercises that will help develop slap bass technique. Catering to all ability levels, the course follows the same structure as our slap bass courses, making it perfect supplementary material. The exercises make use of techniques such as ghost notes, hammer-ons and pull-offs, fretting hand slaps, strumming, double popping, tenths, machine gun triplets, double thumbing and more.

If you’ve already mastered the basics of slap technique, this will be a great course for you as we’ll be developing those skills considerably. By the end of this course, you’ll have some very powerful techniques in your toolkit.

View first lesson of each course absolutely free

100 Slap Bass Grooves

< BACK Subscribe Now Subscriber Login

This course is perfect for those who have worked through the Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced slap bass modules and are looking for additional practice material. In this series of courses, we’ll be playing lines built around techniques such as ghost notes, fretting hand slaps, chord strumming, double popping, tenths, machine gun triplets, double thumbing, open-hammer-pop and more.

Each of the courses shown below contains a series of exercises based around a specific technique. For each course, there is a downloadable resources folder containing PDF worksheets and backing tracks for you to play along with. Full band tracks and isolated bass tracks are also available to download (course subscribers only).

FREE Sample Exercises

The five exercises included in this section can be watched without subscribing. These videos are a sample of the content in the main course.

Slap and Pop Grooves - Part 1

The exercises in this course make use of the fundamental elements of the slap bass technique: thumb slaps, popped notes, hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Slap and Pop Grooves - Part 2

The exercises in this course make use of the fundamental elements of the slap bass technique: thumb slaps, popped notes, hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Fretting Hand Slaps

The focus of this course is fretting hand slaps – percussive ghost notes that are performed by striking the strings with the fingers of the fretting hand.

Using Tenths

Tenths - compound major and minor thirds - are an important part of the bass player’s toolkit, regardless of which playing style you are using. When it comes to the slap technique, tenths are often employed as an alternative to popped octave notes, bringing the added benefit of greater harmonic clarity to a line.

Machine Gun Triplets

Machine gun triplets are rapid-fire triplets performed using a combination of picking hand and fretting hand techniques. Whilst by no means an essential element of the slap bass technique, their careful use can certainly add some significant rhythmic excitement to a line.

Double Stops

Double stops are two notes - any two notes - played simultaneously. Whilst it is not uncommon for bass guitarists to play chords, double stops are useful in that they can often achieve the desired chordal effect, but with fewer notes.

Double Popping

Double popping is a technique that requires you to pop the higher strings on the bass with the first and second fingers. These two popped notes - in combination with slapped notes - are commonly used as part of a triplet rhythm. Double popped triplets are often added into slap grooves to add rhythmic interest.

Strumming

Strumming chords on the bass can be very effective, and certainly works well in conjunction with the slap bass technique. There are many bassists who incorporate strumming into their slap playing, including Stanley Clarke, Les Claypool, Mark King, Victor Wooten, Flea and Michael Manring.

Swung Sixteenth Note Grooves

When it comes to playing slap bass grooves, many of us fall into the trap of playing only in 4/4 time with a straight feel. Of course, music comes in all shapes and sizes and it’s vital that you’re able to apply your slap chops to a variety of different feels and time signatures. With that in mind, in this video course we’ll be looking at some exercises which are played with a swung sixteenth note feel.

Shuffle Grooves

Many bass players feel very comfortable employing their slap techniques over a straight 4/4 rhythm, but far less comfortable when the music has a shuffle feel. When playing in the shuffle feel, linear slap grooves (particularly those that incorporate fretting hand slaps) can be a little more difficult to execute, and it’s these grooves that we’ll be focussing on in this video course.

Double Thumbing

The double thumbing technique is a relatively recent addition to the slap bassist’s toolkit. Using this unusual variant on the slap and pop style, it is possible to play lines that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to play using traditional slap technique.

The Open-Hammer-Pop Technique

The open-hammer-pop technique is a combination of three conventional slap bass elements: a slapped open string, a hammer-on, and a popped note. This technique can be used to play some unique slap bass lines and has been popularised by bassists such as Stuart Hamm and Victor Wooten.