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Slap is a technique rather than a style, and you can play funk with a pick or with your fingers just as well. Everything works around the double-thumb angle, and once you let that be king, your regular thumb, pops, and hand position all fall in line. In this lesson I set up the right hand for efficient slap playing.
The 6-string bass adds a low B and a high C, which means two more strings ringing out while you're trying to play cleanly. Most of the noise problems on this instrument come down to right-hand form and thumb-muting habits. This lesson sets up the hand so the strings you aren't playing stay quiet.
I look at technique as simply the process of getting the music you hear in your head out through your hands onto the instrument. You only need enough technique to play what you hear. In this lesson I walk through the left-hand default position, the most relaxed place your hand can sit, and how to practice from there.
Moving the left hand from string to string inside a single fret is a common bass-line challenge, and it's easier to play when the hand has been preconditioned for it. Short, targeted exercises at the same fret train the muscle memory. Then plug those patterns into grooves so the motion becomes musical instead of mechanical.
The quality of your bass playing on fast, complex material comes down to how efficiently your right (plucking) hand works. The goal is to move and deliver notes in the most relaxed, efficient way possible. Smart right-hand fingering is about finding that relaxed path, and knowing when to break the rules for a specific piece of music.
Fast, complex bass playing comes down to efficient left-hand motion. Outside of a few stretches in the lower positions, the hand should move the same way playing fast as it does playing slow. Practice the line slowly out of time, weed out excess movement, then put it in time, and you'll like what you end up with.
Right-hand slap form on bass works best with one constant reference point, the double-thumb position. Because double-thumb requires the thumb at a specific angle to the string for a clean upstroke, building the standard thumb slap around that same angle minimizes excess motion, so switching between the two doesn't cost you anything.
The quality of your bass playing comes down to the choices you make for your right- and left-hand technique. For right-hand form, I think the floating thumb used with a 2-, 3-, or 4-finger picking technique works the best, since one basic position keeps the hand relaxed across all strings while muting the lower strings you aren't playing.
Slap bass is one of the most physically demanding techniques on the instrument because both hands combine thumb slaps, pops, and muting in tightly coordinated ways. Building a reliable right-hand position is the first step, since the goal is for both hands to know what to do automatically as musical ideas arrive.
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