Ultimate Tapping for Bass Guitar

Ultimate Tapping for Bass Guitar

By Stuart Clayton

Published by Bassline Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Stuart Clayton

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

A History of Tapping Techniques

Setup & Notation

Techniques

Chapter 1 - Basic Technique

Chapter 2 - Playing Arpeggios (Part 1)

Chapter 3 - Playing Chords (Part 1)

Chapter 4 - Playing Arpeggios (Part 2)

Chapter 5 - Playing Chords (Part 2)

Chapter 6 - Providing Accompaniment

Chapter 7 - Developing Rhythmic Independence

Chapter 8 - Contrapuntal Tapping

Chapter 9 - Linear Tapping (Part 1)

Chapter 10 - Linear Tapping (Part 2)

Chapter 11 - Linear Tapping (Part 3)

Chapter 12 - Sweep Picking and Tapping

Chapter 13 - Combining Techniques

Chapter 14 - Études

Biographies & Interviews

Chapter 15 - Emmett Chapman

Chapter 16 - Billy Sheehan

Chapter 17 - Stuart Hamm

Chapter 18 - Michael Manring

Chapter 19 - Victor Wooten

Chapter 20 - Adam Nitti

Introduction

Welcome to Ultimate Tapping for Bass Guitar, the second book in the Bass Techniques series. Tapping is a rather unconventional technique, but in the right hands it can be a valuable musical tool. The aim of this book is to demystify the various forms of tapping that work well on the bass, as well as to examine some pieces that make use of it. We’ll also learn about some of the bass players who have popularised it over the last thirty years.

As a bassist and writer with a passion for education, I have noticed a distinct lack of tuition books covering the tapping technique. Considering the popularity of bassists such as Billy Sheehan, Stuart Hamm and Victor Wooten - all of whom are well known for their virtuosic use of the technique - this seems unusual. But maybe that’s the point: perhaps the tapping technique is seen as something only for the virtuosos? Something that is only required if you want to record a flashy bass player solo album or impress your friends with some cool licks? There’s certainly plenty of evidence to support those presumptions, but to dismiss the technique is to ignore one the most exciting and musically engaging ways of expressing yourself on the bass guitar. After all, there’s a certain pleasure in being able to play a complete piece of music on your own, without requiring accompaniment from other musicians. In the past, such a thing would have been considered a rarity for bassists, but thanks to musical innovators such as Michael Manring, Victor Wooten and Billy Sheehan, many young bass players are beginning to embrace more unorthodox techniques, including tapping.

Studying the tapping technique requires you to approach the bass guitar in a different way. Whereas with more conventional playing styles bass players typically play horizontally - or one note at a time - tapping requires us to play vertically as well, playing several notes at once, just as a pianist or guitarist would. Doing so effectively requires a understanding of the mechanics and application of music theory - learning and playing chordal parts, contrapuntal lines and intricate passages using both hands are all things that you will learn to do through studying the tapping technique. Your overall understanding of harmony will develop and you will begin to recognise chords and scales all over the fingerboard rather than confining them to one location at a time.

This book has therefore been written to provide an entry point for bass players who want to get started with the tapping technique. It’s been written with a cumulative structure, meaning that you should work through the material in order. The more experienced players reading this will likely progress through the early chapters quickly, but it’s important that everyone takes this material at a pace that they are comfortable with. Don’t be tempted to move on before you have completed each chapter: the techniques are introduced gradually, giving you time to develop your finger strength and coordination - as well as your understanding of basic harmony - before you get stuck in to anything too serious. The final chapter of the instructional part of the book contains twelve études - pieces specially designed to provide practice material for specific techniques. Many of these are challenging to say the least, so you’ll need to have successfully worked through everything in the book before tackling them.

I’ve also included biographies for all of the major contributors to the technique. Tapping would not be where it is today were it not for the work of these exceptional musicians and I hope that you’ll take the time to read about them and more importantly, listen to their music. A selected discography has also been included for each of them.

Audio Files

Most of the exercises in this book are accompanied by an audio file. All of the audio for this book (and all of our other books) can be downloaded FREE from the Bassline Publishing website. To find the audio, log in to your account and click on the Free Stuff! link on the main menu. You’ll find the audio files in a zip folder listed with the bonus content for this book. Right click and select ‘Save as’ to download.

I’d like to thank a few people for their invaluable help and support during the writing of this book: Jon Tucker for all of the fantastic playing photography, Neil Zlozower at Atlas Icons for the Billy Sheehan shots, Philippe Dartois, Marc Johnson, Joel McIver at Bass Guitar Magazine, Nick Wells at iBass Magazine, Joe Zon for his fantastic basses, Dave Avenius at Aguilar, Emmett Chapman, Adam Nitti, and all of my students past and present at BIMM Bristol. I’d also like to thank all of the bass players around the world who provided encouragement as I was writing this book. Finally, I’d like to thank my wife Laura for the fantastic front cover design, as well as ongoing love and support.

I hope that you enjoy this book and that it helps you to become proficient with the tapping technique. As always, I would be delighted to hear your thoughts and answer any questions that you might have. Please feel free to send emails to [email protected].

Stuart Clayton

November 2013

A History of Tapping Techniques

Tapping is one of the least conventional ways of the playing the bass guitar and is often (unfairly) regarded as having little musical value beyond the virtuosic showboating typically found on bass player solo albums. Despite this, the technique has a rich and fascinating history that features many highly skilled musicians from a variety of different disciplines and genres. When studied methodically, the tapping technique can have significant educational value for bass players when it comes to learning and understanding harmony. This is because it encourages us to think more about chords and their function within music than we might otherwise do when playing single note lines.

The specific origins of the tapping technique are difficult to pin down accurately, but it’s certainly safe to say that it existed long before the advent of the electric guitar. Classical composer and virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini made use of a variation on the technique during the 1800’s, while ukulele virtuoso Roy Smeck dazzled audiences with his tapping skills in the 1930’s. Smeck, an astonishingly accomplished musician who earned the nickname ‘The Wizard of the Strings’ played banjo, guitar and steel guitar in addition to the ukulele, and was a regular on the Vaudeville circuit. A casual YouTube search will turn up many examples of Smeck’s work, including early footage of the man himself performing Anton Rubenstein’s ‘Melody in F’ from the 1932 movie Club House Party. Smeck can be seen using the tapping technique in one section of this particular video, even appearing to utilise the cross finger technique that would be employed by virtuoso bassist Billy Sheehan more than forty five years later.

The Early Innovators

During the same period, an engineer named Harry DeArmond had invented the first commercially available attachable guitar pickup and had developed a piano-like ‘touch-style’ tapping technique which he used to demonstrate its sensitivity. DeArmond’s pickups quickly became popular and were soon being fitted by all of the major guitar manufacturers including Fender, Epiphone, Guild, Martin and Gretsch. Jimmie Webster, a young guitarist who was working as a consultant for Gretsch, was particularly impressed by DeArmond’s tapping skills and began to further develop the touch technique himself. He used it extensively on his RCA album from 1958 Webster’s Unabridged, Jimmie Webster’s Stereo Guitar and later wrote in detail about the method in his book Touch Method for Electric and Amplified Spanish Guitar, although he graciously credited Harry DeArmond for the original concept. Like DeArmond, Webster was also passionate about guitar construction and designed and patented several interesting innovations for Gretsch including string mutes, a tone changer and most famously, the Project-O-Sonic stereo guitar which was showcased on his album.

Jimmie Webster was not alone in seeking to modify the guitar for the tapping technique. After witnessing Webster in concert in the late 1950’s, a young guitarist named David Bunker became interested in the touch-style technique (commonly referred to today as two handed tapping), but found it difficult to apply to different genres of music. His solution was to create a new instrument, designed specifically with the technique in mind. Working with his father Joe, he developed a double necked instrument which had one guitar neck and one bass guitar neck. A patent for the instrument, which they dubbed the ‘Duo-Lectar’ was granted in 1958. Over fifty years later, Bunker continues to build and perform on the instrument, now referred to as the ‘Touch Guitar’.

Of course, the seemingly unlimited potential of the touch technique was to inspire many other guitarists to begin using it. During the sixties, Italian classical guitarist Vittorio Camardese became known for his mastery of the technique, as did jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, who is best known as a member of the elite team of studio musicians (along with legendary bassist Carol Kaye) known as ‘The Wrecking Crew’.

The Chapman Stick

The evolution of the touch style technique and instruments built to further its development continued into the sixties, when a jazz guitarist named Emmett Chapman began to develop a new method of tapping on the guitar. In contrast to Jimmie Webster and David Bunker et al., Chapman played with his fingers perpendicular to the strings rather than parallel, lining each one up with a fret. This allowed him to play basslines, chords and melodies all at once, in a manner very similar to that of a pianist. Initially he refined the technique on a modified long scale 9-string guitar before deciding to develop a new instrument with a far larger fingerboard. The first incarnation, built in late 1970, was a bodiless guitar comprised only of an ebony fingerboard with pickups which Chapman dubbed ‘The Electric Stick’. Over the next four years he continued to refine both his technique and the instrument and eventually was able to build a production model in 1974, known as ‘The Chapman Stick’. In the same year he set up a company, Stick Enterprises, to build and distribute the new instrument. Its popularity led him to be featured on the nationally televised series What’s My Line? and to publish a book on his technique entitled Free Hands: A New Discipline of Fingers on Strings.

Throughout the seventies the touch style or ‘tapping’ technique was utilised by a wide range of guitarists. Harvey Mandel, a noted blues rock guitarist who worked with Canned Heat, The Rolling Stones and John Mayall, used the technique on his 1973 album Shangrenade, while Steve Hackett of prog-rockers Genesis employed it on tracks such as ‘Dancing with the Moonlit Knight’ and ‘Return of the Giant Hogweed’. Randy Resnick of the band Pure Food and Drug Act (and who also played with Canned Heat and John Mayall), used the technique on the albums Cup Full of