Funky, how

Hoo boy, you can really tell I’m sheltering in place huh. Anyhoo, how do you do this (and yes I clicked on it because it’s a stingray video)? He’s got a lot of popping going on, without actually popping or slapping (before the actual slapping part). Is he just smacking down on the strings with his fingers really hard?

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Looks to me like he’s just playing normal fingerstyle with some ghost notes and harmonics.

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So, yeah, that is the more advanced finger plucking style (and using most other sound variations you can get from utilizing the different ways your fingers can interact with strings). We beginners/intermediate beginners are usually just plucking away in a rather monotonous way (with respect to volume and dynamics), but if we really want to master the bass, we need to start working on dynamics!

The guy here is “just” plucking with different strengths and slightly different ways he attacks the strings with his plucking fingers, while also making use of ghost notes, hammer-ons, pull-offs and harmonics with his fretting hand (like @howard also mentioned). It looks so effortless when these guys do it, but it takes a lot of practice and experience.

To start off with, instead of chugging regular 8th notes, try to accent, e.g., every first of four 8ths notes, and a get feel for how you actually “do” that. Give it a real hard accent, too - but without losing the groove!! Then try to accent only every third 8th note in a group of four and so on. You can spent the whole day just doing these kinds of exercises :grin:

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Thanx for that!

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Yes! Look up ghost notes. That’s a lot of what’s happening here. Also, a real short and tight articulation.
Stabbing the note cleanly rather than letting it ring and resonate.

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