Bass. Popping. Technique.
Just stick your finger in, hook and pull.
Easy, right?
Yeah... AND NO.
If you pop with bad technique,
you won't stand a chance
of slapping and popping
at actual song speeds.
["Hair" by Graham Central Station]
[glass shattering and cats yowling]
In this video, I'll show you
the core essentials of popping
for thumb up or thumb down slapping,
how beginners kill their slap
with bad popping technique,
and the teeter-totter technique
that all pro slappers use
to keep their slaps
and pops flowing easily
even at crazy speeds.
[fast slaps and pops]
But before I get
to the all important
teeter-totter technique,
let's quickly make sure
you've got three slap and
pop core essentials in place.
[BassBuzz Theme]
First you need good slap technique.
I've talked about the slap technique
in mega detail already in
my Idiot-Proof slap video,
but here's a quick rundown.
Rotate the forearm,
don't wiggle the thumb,
hit with the outside edge,
relax your thumb so it
bounces off the string.
Next, you need to dial in your pops.
Popping is where you use your finger
to snap a string against the fretboard,
creating a pop or snap sound.
So let's dig in to how to do it.
Starting with the thumb
up popping technique,
as used by Larry Graham, Victor Wooten,
Mark King, Rhonda Smith, Les Claypool,
and most other thumb up slappers.
This is also the way
I teach you how to pop
in the slap module of my
Beginner to Badass course
over at bassbuzz.com.
So get your arm into your slap position
and hook your index
finger under the G string.
It's easiest on the G string
because there are no strings
above to get in your way.
Now just rotate your forearm back
with some tension in your finger
and the string should snap like that.
There should be very little
actual finger movement.
Just like with slap, it's all
about the forearm rotation,
and the string should make
a diagonal line on your finger like this
on the edge closest to your thumb.
If you're a thumb down slapper,
the technique is pretty similar.
This is the style of popping
you'll see from folks
like Ryan Martinie, Dirk Lance,
Tim Commerford, and Chris Wolstenholme.
So get in your thumb down position.
You're still just
hooking your index finger
under the string, and
rotating the forearm back,
but now since your hand angle has changed,
you'll be more centered on your finger
instead of on the edge.
So that's bass popping technique
as it's most commonly used for
classic slapping and popping.
Wait 'til the slap bass
solo comes in, ready?
Slap bass, turn it off,
he doesn't like it.
He doesn't like slap bass?
But there are a couple of variations
that might help you find your groove.
First up, Flea of the
Red Hot Chili Peppers
uses his middle finger to pop.
[Flea] I will slap down with my thumb
and then with my middle finger
it will go underneath the D string
and pull up like this.
Using your middle finger
might feel more natural
if you're slapping with your thumb
at an extreme downward angle like Flea.
Also, Louis Johnson, one of
the grandfathers of slap bass
sometimes used arm motion
to snap the string off the fretboard
in addition to the forearm rotation.
This helped add more muscle to his pops
and create more of a visual performance
with arms flailing around,
but at the expense of
some technique efficiency.
So try out those variations,
see what works for you,
but I don't recommend
using the finger isolated
to pop like this
or flexing the wrist upwards
to get the pop like this.
It'll tire your forearm
out, create muting issues,
and it'll mess up the
teeter-totter technique
that we're gonna get to in a minute.
The last core essential we need to cover
is minimum viable pressure.
Here's the deal.
If you start learning
how to slap the bass,
you will get blisters.
[Poor Josh....]
To avoid annihilating your pop finger,
learn to be an MVP and use
minimum viable pressure,
just enough tension in the finger
to get that pop snap sound and no more.
Try this out with me.
Let's make the motion of popping,
but relax your fingertips
so it really doesn't resist
the string when you rotate up.
Now it just sounds like
a normal pluck, right?
There's no snap sound.
So gradually add more tension
to your fingertip bit by bit
until there you are,
you're hearing the snap.
So that's your sweet spot.
Any more tension than that
will just put resistance on
the string that you don't need
and you'll wear out your finger faster.
And if you use way too much tension,
your pop won't even happen,
you'll just keep holding on to the string.
Ow, [grunts], ow.
Also, quick tip, make sure your action,
the distance between the
string and the fretboard
is low enough.
If your action is too high,
it's gonna require more
pressure to get the snap sound
which is gonna wear
out your finger faster.
So if there's more than about
five millimeters of clearance
between your E string
and your 12th fret wire,
I recommend that you get a setup.
Okay, so that's your slap
and pop essentials covered,
but without the mythical
teeter-totter technique,
you'll struggle to slap
and pop in real time.
So let's dig into that.
Whether you're slapping
thumb up, thumb down,
using all forearm rotation to pop,
or using some arm motion as well,
it all comes down to finding
a smooth slap and pop flow
using what we'll call the
teeter-totter technique.
Nail this, and you'll be able to keep up
with the slap shredders,
miss it, and you'll struggle
with even basic slap lines.
So here's how it works.
If you have good slap technique,
your thumb will bounce off
the string after each slap
without rotating the
forearm back up like this.
So your slap should be done at this point
and here's why this bounce is so crucial.
With your hand in this position,
you're automatically set up to pop
just by rotating back the way you came.
And now you're back to where
you started, ready to slap.
Slap, pop.
Slap, pop.
So why are we calling this
the teeter-totter technique?
Well, on a teeter-totter,
which is also called a see-saw,
one person pushes off the ground
which sets the other
person up to do the same.
[Wilhelm screaming]
Similarly, the slapping
motion puts your hand
in position to be able to pop,
which then puts you back
in slap ready position.
Beginners commonly miss
out on this teeter-totter
by doing this,
adding extra cycles of rotation.
So the slap goes down and up,
and now you have to come back down
to get the pop and go up,
which is totally impractical
because it wastes time and energy,
making it impossible to play fast.
So it takes you two full rotations,
down up, down up,
to get slap and pop,
instead of just one down, up.
When you teeter-totter properly,
adding pops to your lines
isn't really anymore work
because if you're slapping,
the potential for the pop is
already there in the rotation.
You just have to get the finger hooked in.
That's why you really need
to have that thumb relaxed,
so that it bounces off the string
without rotating the forearm back
and that sets you up to
use the teeter-totter
to grab your pops on the way up.
Another way to use the teeter-totter
is to click like on this video,
which then sets your cursor up
to subscribe to Bass Buzz
and click the bell for notifications
when new lessons come out.
What an amazing versatile technique.
Let's try it out.
We're gonna play some
Jamiroquai in a minute,
but first let's practice
the teeter-totter together
with a super simple drill.
Just slapping the open E string,
and popping the open G string.
No fretted notes to worry about
so you can focus on an
efficient teeter-totter
with no wasted movement.
And you see those Ts and
Ps under the sheet music?
The T stands for thumb, which means slap,
and the P stands for pop.
So here we go, nice and
slow with some drums.
Here we go.
One, two, three, four.
Slap, pop,
slap, pop,
just focusing on the teeter-totter
and the forearm rotation.
Got a nice boring backing track
so you can stay focused
on technique and tone.
So once you can play that,
which was quarter notes
at 70 beats per minute.
Just start speeding it up
a few beats per minute
at a time over time,
until eventually you can slap and pop
eighth notes at 100 beats per minute.
Like this.
That could take months of daily practice,
but it's a reasonable
goal to be able to keep up
with common slap lines.
Now let's work that same drill,
but we'll move the pop to the D string.
This adds a significant accuracy challenge
because you now have to
tuck your popping finger in
without the G string getting in your way.
Eventually you'll have the muscle memory
to get your pop finger on
the right string every time.
Be patient in the meantime, Grasshopper,
and make sure you're keeping
your teeter-totter working
even though you're focusing
on popping the D string.
So let's try this some more.
Nice and slow again.
One, two, three, four.
Nice work.
Let's use our teeter-totter
and play some real music.
This is the intro riff
to "Emergency on Planet
Earth" by Jamiroquai
with Stuart Zender killing it on the bass.
This is a really simple riff.
It's just roots and octaves,
which gives us a nice
slap and pop workout.
So we're gonna start with our index finger
on the third fret of
the E string for a slap,
and then our picky finger on
the fifth fret of the D string
for our first pop.
And this is gonna be that tricky popping
on the D string again,
so it's gonna take some practice
to be accurate with that.
Okay, so index, pinky,
and then slide the same thing down.
Index on the first fret of the E string,
pinky on the third fret of the D string
for a slap and a pop.
And then we go up, same pattern.
Index on the sixth fret of the A string.
Pinky on the eighth fret of the G string
for a slap and a pop.
And then we just have a root,
so we're gonna set ourselves
up for the next part.
Play the fifth fret of the
A string with our pinky,
and then index finger on the
third fret of the A string.
Pinky finger on the fifth
fret of the G string
for a slap and a pop.
Go up two frets, index on the
fifth fret of the A string,
pinky on the seventh fret of the G string.
Up another fret, index on the
sixth fret of the A string,
pinky on the eighth fret of the G string.
Last couple notes, we'll
play with our middle finger
on the fourth fret of the E string.
That sets us up for the beginning again.
All right, let's funk it
up and play this thing.
Don't forget to teeter-totter efficiently.
One, two, three, four and we're in.
Here we go, one, two, three, four.
A teeter-totter isn't the only piece
of playground equipment
you can use for slapping.
Here's the merry-go-round technique.
[children booing]
The swing-set slap.
[children booing]
And the monkey bars.
[crickets chirping]
