Fretting Hand Slaps

Fretting hand slaps are percussive ghost notes that are performed by striking the strings with the fingers of the fretting hand. This is essentially a more forceful version of the way in which you might lightly touch a string to stop it from ringing.

Fretting hand slaps have been used by many bass players over the years but were widely popularised by UK bassist Mark King (Level 42). Originally a drummer, King approached the bass in a similar way, combining regular thumb slaps and finger pops with fretting hand slaps to build up complex sixteenth note-based slap grooves. It is also possible to play pitched notes with the fretting hand using the same technique. This will also be covered in some of the exercises in this course.

Don’t forget to hit the Download Resources button above in order to download the PDF worksheet and audio files for this course (available to subscribers only). The worksheet is available with TAB and without, for those who wish to give their reading skills a workout.