Since I was a teenager — who new nothing about bass guitar — “playing slap” meant something that Fieldy of Korn, or Toshiya of Dir en Grey did.
Two decades later, I bought a bass guitar, and I consumed a ton of “slap bass” videos on YouTube, including (of course) lessons from BassBuzz. Everyone talk about Flea and Victor Wooten, and Marcus Miller, and Mark King, etc. But none of those videos show the technique and sound, that I’d always associated with “slap”.
How did Fieldy get Korn’s percussive and “woody” sound? Was this even slapping?
I don’t think it’s slapping. I think he plays fingerstyle, with very low action, and really digs in, which causes the strings to hit the frets. I might be wrong though.
Feldy is also playing with his thumb over the fretboard which lends itself to bouncing the strings off the frets and getting a percussive sound. Something Geezer also does
As far as digging in, also check out Larry Graham, who used to really dig in and knock the low strings against the frets to do a percussive kick drum sound in his words
