Arguably the most distinct and well-recognized method of bass playing is called “slap.” But what is slap?

I will explain the basic technique in the article but first you should hear what I’m talking about, so you have a reference for your slap practice.

Here is a really high quality video I found. If you want inspiration or ideas, just search ‘bass guitar slap’ on youtube.

The riff is pretty complicated but you can see his great technique and adds some “picking” (I will show you how to pick later). The word thump is what you want to describe your slap bass playing.

Here is a crazy video of Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers demonstrating his slapping abilities.

Listen to awesome bass music and watch some inspiring videos and get yourself pumped up to play slap bass. It is a long hard battle, and is never finished, so always be practicing and moving forward! Even the pros keep innovating and finding cool new ways to play slap bass.

In my next post, I’ll post the technique that I used when I first started out, and hopefully you’ll find it useful.