Tapping on Bass – Six Strings? Eight Strings? Twelve Strings?
If you’re a bass player, I’d bet you’d agree that the power and precision of the bass is that it can play a single, low note.
You can play fast or slow, but learning bass technique initially is learning to play one note at a time. If you experiment with playing chords, you’ve learned that you must spread the notes out, because close-voiced notes sound muddy.
BASS PLAYERS BEGIN TAPPING ON BASS
With modern amplification, more and more bass-players are learning bass tapping – that is, just touching the strings to the frets, in order to sound a note. This touchstyle method allows playing the bass strings with both hands, because plucking is not needed.
And tapping on bass opens the door to chordal bass music, and to playing melodies. With two-handed tapping on bass you can be a better side-man, but you could also begin playing solo gigs, and it’s not all that difficult, with the Easy Touchstyle Method. At the end, I’ll tell you how to get a free bass-tapping method book that reveals how easy it can be.
Obviously, to play spread-out chords, and to play high-pitched melodies, you’re going to need more than a four-string bass, because you’re going to need more range.
The question is – how many strings make for easy learning to play bass tapping? And how many strings work best for melody playing?
LEARNING BASS TAPPING EASIER WITH MORE STRINGS?
Because you’ve worked darn hard to master the four or five strings you already have, your reaction might be that having more strings would be harder to play.
But it doesn’t work like that. Having more strings permits less interference between your two hands. I’m reminded of the country boy wandering the city street, and seeing a piano in a store window. “Gosh!†he said, “How would you ever mash all them notes at once?â€
And that’s the answer. Just because there’s a lot of strings on the instrument doesn’t mean you play them all at once. You still select just a few strings. But having more room for your two hands to operate makes it easier for your two hands to learn tapping bass.
USING TWO STRINGSETS FOR TAPPING ON BASS
For example, if your two hands are to operate independently, like a piano player — easier than it sounds with the right method — then suppose you have a six-string bass. You could use three strings for the ‘bass’ part, and the other three strings for a melody. But you can’t play most melodies very easily on three strings without a lot of moving up and down those three strings.
More strings would be easier, and would give each hand more room. So maybe you get a bass that has eight strings. This is better. You could have four strings for the ‘bass’ part, and that would leave four strings for the melody. This is workable, though you will discover that your two hands will occasionally squabble, because both of them want some note that’s on the same string!
But what if you split the strings into two separate groups of four and four?
And suppose on the ‘bass’ set you added a couple of higher strings. Now you’ve got six ‘bass’ strings. You can still play all the basslines, plus you can play spread-out chords easily all on the low end of the bass strings.
And to the four melody strings, suppose you add two lower strings. Now you can cover the range of pretty much any melody you’ll find on a leadsheet.
And because there’s so much overlap in the two stringsets now, your two hands will never have to fight over a string, because each hand has got six strings to play in.
MAKING IT EASY TO LEARN TO PLAY BASS TAPPING
It is much EASIER to learn full two-handed tapping on bass, when you have two stringsets and each of your hands has all the strings it needs.
It is much EASIER to learn bass tapping when you have two stringsets, and the optimal number for fast learning is six bass and six melody. I’ll explain why …
You’ll like this … it’s a little bit of magic …
OPERATE YOUR TWO HANDS THE SAME WAY? THAT’S EASY!
If you examine one of the Mobius Megatar touch-style basses which our company makes, you’ll find double dots at fret two, and at fret twelve.
With this fact, you can use a powerful learning method. It works like this …
Begin by placing your left hand just above double dots at fret two on the bass strings.
And place your right hand just above double dots at fret twelve on melody strings.
In these two positions, the notes below your two hands across all six strings are *identical*.
So for your initial learning of pure bass tapping play, you only have to learn *one* set of scales, and *one* set of chord shapes, and you can even train both hands at the same time. This clarity, simplicity, and power produce very rapid learning, and also allow you to very rapidly transfer 85%-95% of what you already know as a bass player.
TAPPING ON BASS WITH YOUR RIGHT HAND JUST GOT EASIER
Furthermore, all those years you were training your left hand on the frets … you were actually training your head. And you’re in luck, because your right hand is wired into the very same head! You will soon discover that what your left hand knows … your right hand almost knows already, because you’ve already built the patterns into your head.
What this means is that, in this position, your left-hand skills will transfer very fast to
your right hand, because what each hand does to produce a G-Triad is identical, and on the same strings beneath each hand. Feels the same. Looks the same. Sounds the same.
This is clear in your mind, and fast-learning in your hands.
FASTER LEARNING TO PLAY BASS TAPPING
The point is that it is FASTER-LEARNING when you have two stringsets, and your initial position makes the notes beneath your two hands to be identical across each six strings.
Make no mistake. In the Fret-Two bass-strings position, and the Fret-Twelve melody-strings position, the notes are two octaves apart. Two octaves apart, but the same notes beneath each hand.
This gives you a nice split of bass and melody, and it’s much like playing two-handed piano. But it’s faster-learning than piano, because when you move your two hands the same way, you get the same sequence of notes.
In your initial learning, you can even train your two hands identically and at the same time. Later, separating out two different parts can als be easy … with the right method.
FREE HOW TO PLAY BASS TAPPING METHOD BOOK
And you can get a free copy of the bass tapping method book where this system is completely revealed. The Easy Touchstyle Bassics method book on two-handed tapping on bass comes free with a (free) subscription to the world’s premier Bass Tapping Newsletter, and you can get your free bass tapping lessons here.
Remember: Two string-sets provides faster learning, it’s immediately clearer in the mind, and your two hands will never need to fight over who gets to use a string.
The left hand can play all the range of a 6-string bass, plus easy good-sounding four string chords between frets 1 and 9.
The right hand can play all the range of melodies written on the treble clef. The two hands can easily play unison melodies, which is easy as eating a sandwich with two hands, but it sounds really, really good.
I promise you — playing with two stringsets of six is easier than playing on 6-strings, easier than playing on 8-strings, the mental map is clearer, and learning is fast.
As you learn more about the Easy Touch-Style Method for tapping on bass, more and more you will appreciate how rich the music, and how simple it can be.
Comments
Leave a Reply