We’re going to look at a slap riff I use when I need a quick fix for my flagging slap speed and stamina. Give it a try and I guarantee you’ll improve your slap thumb FAST!
The Fast Thumb Riff
These days I barely do any slap bass anymore, so in order to build my stamina back up quickly, I’ve developed a riff that focuses on the speed of my thumb.
I wrote this riff specifically for working on my thumb action, there are no pops in there – it’s all just thumb bounce to get your action up to speed. There are some ghost notes with left hand muting in there too to give it a bit more interest.
Once you have this riff comfortably under the fingers, play it around and around at a slow tempo before increasing the tempo more and more. You may start to feel some fatigue in your left arm as you go along, if this happens then just stop, relax and when you feel recovered you can start again.
Even just practicing this riff for only 5 minutes a day will drastically improve your thumb slap technique and stamina, this will take your slapping to a whole new level.. maybe even Level 42!
Hi Mark, greetings from Uwe from Germany!
I have a question: are there always real ghost notes for them
Crosses, or is it sometimes just the sound that is produced
if I mute the strings again with my fingers?
I hope you find the time to answer this question for me!
See you tonight on Live Chat
In this example every ghost note is a right hand ghost slap, no left hand tap/slap.
Great exercise well taught Mark!!!