Tech News: Play Better Bass – Bass Styles: Different Styles of Electric Bass Playing

Bass Playing styles can be divided into four main categories.

• Finger-style
• Picking (plectrum/picks)
• Slapping and Popping
• Tapping

Finger-style is by far the most popular style. Players alternate between the Index and Middle fingers. (Right Hand for right handed players)

Finger-style Bass Playing

You can also use the other three fingers.  The thumb sometimes gets used in African Music in a Wes Montgomery type of style. This style should not be confused with “Popping”. Advanced players will also use more than 2 fingers on the right hand. For Double stops and chords you can even use all the fingers.

Walking Bass is usually associated with Jazz and Blues, but can be found in other styles of music. It is a good idea to keep a library of walking bass “licks” in order to keep walking lines interesting and not too repetitive. Your right hand is very close to the neck in order to get a fatter sound. (You can find out more about this style in one of our previous editions.)

The sound of a walking bass-line is generally ever-changing rather than a simple riff following chord progression. The walking line can use scale tones, arpeggios and passing tones, and provides an undulating melody that rises and falls in tone over several bars. With funk the bass-lines are more syncopated, and the left hand plays a vital rule in muting strings to play “dead notes”.  Sometimes the palm of the right hand can get used to mute strings. This is called Palm Muting and the Thumb, Index and Middle Fingers are used. This is very popular in West African Music. In Rock music you alternate most of the time with the Index and Middle finger.

Picking involves the use – obviously – of a pick (or plectrum) and is used commonly in punk and rock styles. Bass picks are normally thicker and bigger than guitar picks. You use up and down strokes, very much like guitar players. This style gives one more attack to your sound.

Slapping and Popping has been used in funk  and fusion music for many years but nowadays this style is incorporated into pop, rock and world music too.

For this style you have to be able to:

1. Be precise with thumb attacks.
2. Only hit the string you want to sound.
3. Master the art of muting strings.
4. Attack muted thumb notes with the same intensity as sounded notes.
5. Control your Pull attacks that they are not louder or more intense than thumb attacks

Slap techniques are labeled as follows:

T=Thumb attack.

X=Dead note (String attacked as indicated, but not allowed to ring. These are notated using the open string on which they are attacked.)

U=Thumb-up stroke (thumb pulls up from under the string)

S=Slide

H=Hammer on (no attack with slapping hand)

P=Pull string with first or second finger

L=Lift finger from previous note to the note with the L above it

Slurs show when notes are sounded without a right-hand attack, as in hammers, slides, and lifts. (Only the first note of a slurred group is articulated with the right hand.)

The basic idea of Slapping and Popping is to hit the string with your thumb on the last fret and pop (plug) with your Index and/or Ring finger.

Abe Laboriel, Larry Graham, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten, Flea, Les Claypool and Mark King are all happening “Slappers.”

'Happening Bass Slapper’ – Victor Wooten

Tapping just means any system of playing electric bass where you touch the string to the fret to sound the note, rather than plucking the strings. Hold your bass as usual, and with your left hand you’ll either hold a chord or play some notes. Your right hand will be further up the neck, and as a left finger hits some notes, you’ll quickly use a right finger to play a note higher up the neck. One simple way to think it through is just to play your diatonic or pentatonic scale or a given chord with your left hand, and with your right hand play that same diatonic or pentatonic scale but higher on the neck. It’s this rapid alternation of your left fingers and right fingers that gives the Van Halen style its drive and interest.

The other method is more like playing a bass and guitar at the same time, or, with the right instrument, it is more like piano playing. Here you are not going to alternate two hands on the same string, at least not very often. Instead you’ll play low notes (like bass) or chords with your left hand near to the nut and with your right hand you’ll play melodies or rhythmic chords on the strings higher up, closer to the body. It’s more like a piano, for example, with chords in the left hand and melody in the right, or like a piano where you play roots and bass patterns low and left-handed, and rhythm chords or melody higher-pitched with the right hand.

Michael Manring, Victor Wooten, Stu Hamm, Tony Levin and Billy Sheehan are some of the masters of this style.

Hammer-ons, pull- offs and all the other left hand “tricks” can be used in all styles.These days it is vey important to master as many styles as possible.

Till next time, LET THERE BE BASS!!!

Written  By   :   Alistair Andrews

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