Fretting Hand Slaps

Fretting hand slaps are percussive ghost notes that are performed by striking the strings with the fingers of the fretting hand. This is essentially a more forceful version of the way in which you might lightly touch a string to stop it from ringing.

Fretting hand slaps have been used by many bass players over the years but were widely popularised by UK bassist Mark King (Level 42). Originally a drummer, King approached the bass in a similar way, combining regular thumb slaps and finger pops with fretting hand slaps to build up complex sixteenth note-based slap grooves. It is also possible to play pitched notes with the fretting hand using the same technique. This will also be covered in some of the exercises in this course.

You can learn more about fretting hand slaps in the Slap Bass – Intermediate Level video course, which you can find HERE. Don't forget to hit the Download Resources button above to receive the PDF worksheet and audio files that accompany these lessons!

This course contains the following videos, each of which can be selected from the video player above: