Slapping
Slapping is traditionally a bass guitar technique; however, it can be applied successfully to guitar. It involves using the side of the right-hand thumb to slap the bass strings with enough force to cause them to slam into the frets, creating a very percussive, metallic sound to the note's attack. For the treble strings, one of the right hand fingers hooks and pulls the string away from the guitar's face and releases, with the snapback causing the string to slam into the frets, achieving the same tone.
Slapping is traditionally associated with funk, where it can help emphasize off-beat accents.
Contents
PreReqs
Technique
It's easiest to start with the fingers' technique, as it has far fewer subtleties than the thumb technique. This will allow you to hear the tone and make sure you get the same tone from your thumb.
Fingers' Technique
Pinch any string between the right hand thumb and index finger over the middle pickup. Pull the string away, perpendicular to the front or face of the body; so that it has significant but not extreme tension. Let go of the string. It should snapback towards its rest state with enough force to carry it into the frets, making a loud popping sound during the note's attack, after which the note sustains as usual.
The only way this changes for slapping technique is that the thumb will not be available to pinch the string. Instead, we hook onto the string with just one of the fingers, preferably the middle finger but index also works. Pull it far away enough from the body and allow it to slide off the finger tip. If you pulled it far enough away and in a direction nearly perpendicular to the body's face, it should have enough momentum to slap back against the frets.
Thumb Technique
First, the thumb needs to be free. You either need to set the pick down or hold it with the ring and/or pinky fingers of the right hand.
Completely open your right hand and place your palm on top of the strings. Extend your thumb outwards towards the neck. Notice how the bony part of the side of the thumb is over the strings. This is the part of the thumb you want to hit the string - around the joint and base of the thumbnail. The force of the strike should come from rotating the wrist, not the thumb itself although its ok if the thumb moves a little. The thumb should approach directly at the string you are playing - you want to hit the string, not pluck through it. Here's the key: as soon as you hit the string, move your thumb back away from the string. If done with enough force and quickly enough, the initial hit should put enough momentum in the string for it to hit the frets and begin to resonate. If you lifted your thumb up quickly enough, it will not touch and interfere with the resonating string.
You do not want to "push" the string into the frets. Your hit should propel the string into the frets. This means your thumb motion must halt right after making contact with the string and then back away. If you are pushing the string into the frets, the attack of the note will be weak and you are very likely to accidentally mute it.
Embellishment
Slapping in and of itself is a simple technique that only changes how the attack portion of a note sounds. At first it may seem like something is missing - great slap players sound like they're getting all kinds of notes in there, far faster than you can slap.
Slap playing is greatly embellished by hammer-on's or other grace notes. See this example:
s s d-------h6--6-- a-------------- e--0-h4--------
The s's above the tab indicate to slap. Notice with the hammer-ons, we can now add speed and we get a contrast between the hammer-ons and slaps.
We play the open E string in the above example, but what if that note is not in the key or doesn't correspond to the current harmony? For slap playing, we are often more concerned about the rhythm and accents than the actual notes being played. That sounds a little crazy at first, but keep in mind that the poppy attack of a slap is mostly noise. Considering that we immediately move off the slap into another note, there is little chance to actually hear the pitch of that open string slap. That means we can almost always use open string slaps before a hammer-on, regardless of the key we're playing in.
The above example also uses octaves. This lets us play the same note several times without it getting boring.
Examples
- Guthrie Govan?
- Animals as Leaders?
For bass,
- Red Hot Chili Peppers?
- Primus?