What You Should Know about the Different Bass Guitar Playing Styles
Electric bass guitarists use different playing styles not just to distinguish themselves in form and appearance but also through their music. If you want to broaden your musical range and find new ways to express your work, here’s what you should know about the different bass guitar playing styles.
Fingerstyle
This is the traditional and most old-school technique for playing the bass guitar. Granted, it may seem like an inappropriate fit with an electric guitar but there’s not wrong with learning this style and adding to your versatility. You can, however, opt to use a pick in order to copy the type of music that a fingerstyle technique can produce.
Although there are numerous ways for you to practice fingerstyle, just remember to use a metronome as this can help you ensure you’re maintaining the appropriate beat and timing for your music. It can also help your fingers move more quickly and be more flexible.
Slap Bass
This is one of the bass guitar playing styles that seems to have been made for electric bass guitars. Slap bass emerged in the 1950s to 1960’s era. It creates a popping sound that is quite prominent in funk music. To play in this style, you would have to pull the string away from your guitar’s body then release it so that the string would slap on your guitar. And that’s when it creates its unmistakable popping sound.
Slap bass is the kind of technique that’s meant to put you at the center of everyone’s attention and do really well in public performances for that reason. Others, however, are not as impressed with slap bass, believing that it detracts from a song’s musicality but since you’re using an electric guitar, slap bass definitely produces the kind of musicality that your type of song would want.
Tapping
And finally, you have tapping, which is prevalent in the European rock scene as well as other sub-genres of music that feature fusions with metal music. Van Halen is famous for two-hand tapping but you can of course start more simply with single-hand tapping. Just make sure that your electric guitar is amplified to the hilt or your audience won’t be able to hear your tapping.
To tap, just press the strings to the fret with a tapping motion. That’s it!
What you’ve found here are naturally not the only things you should know about the different bass guitar playing styles. It’s essential that you continue exploring different ways to improve the depth and range of your music as that’s the only way you can grow and improve.
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