Chords for Aram Bedrosian - Slapping Tutorial

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ _ _ Hey, this is R.
Bedrosian, and I'm really happy to be back with my friends at Bass Players United.
I did a tutorial on strumming a little while back, and today I'm going to talk a little bit about slapping.
So I'm going to start with just some general tips for those of you who haven't really done a lot of slapping, and
then I'm going to get into a little bit more advanced stuff involving some scales to sort of introduce some melodic possibilities.
_ So, uh, slapping with the thumb is,
is generally, _ um,
[E] bouncing motion right at the edge of the fingerboard.
I like to keep it nice and light and loose,
_ _ and I like to keep my thumb fairly parallel to the strings.
That tends to allow you to aim just a little bit easier at
the inner strings when the thumb is sort of parallel. _ _
[G] _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [Gb] _
Practicing slapping open strings is probably the best thing you can do to get going with your slapping,
just with a metronome or a drum loop. _
So in terms of some more advanced [E] stuff, what we're going to do today is take a look at some scale exercises,
incorporating the G blues scale.
You can use any scale you want, but today we're just going to use G blues because it's kind of cool.
_ Incorporating that with popping the open G string in between every note of the scale.
So [G] what we're going to do is _
slap the scale, _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] _ _ [G] _ but pop the open G in between every time like this.
_ [Bb] _
_ _ _ [Db] _ _ [D] _ _ [F] _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ [Bb] _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ So this produces a nice full sound, and it also allows you to get into some more melodic
territory, which is a really nice complement to the octave-based slapping that happens so frequently.
_ _ Also, it's really good exercise in terms of moving your thumb up and down the strings.
So as it is with any exercise, we can just add a few elements
to make the thing more involved and a little bit more challenging.
What we're going to do next is [E] add a slap on the open string,
and then a hammer onto the scale note.
So we're going to slap the open string, hammer onto the note in the scale, and then pop the open G like this.
[G] _ _ [Bb] _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ [D] _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ [A] _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
Because you're sort of striking with the left hand with the hammers,
you're now kind of utilizing both hands to produce notes.
What this allows you to do is go a lot faster without a lot more effort than normal.
So this is one of those exercises that can get super fast and sound really cool
_ like this. _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Again, [E] that was just a slap, and then a hammer, and then a pop.
_ The next thing we're going to do is we're going to add another slap after the hammer.
So we're going [E] to slap the open string, [G] hammer,
slap again, and then pop on every note of the scale like this.
_ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ [F] _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ I love these kind of exercises.
I think they really allow you to play some more melodic scale-based stuff,
which really opens up some doors, especially when you're using it with the more traditional kind of funk octave stuff.
_ Yeah, so that's pretty much
it for today on slapping.
I'm really happy to be back with my friends at Bass Players United.
I hope you enjoyed it.
This is Aron