Rockabilly electric bass technique?

I've had my bass a little more than a week but from my research it seems as though nylon tapewounds add to that upright double bass sound. I'm getting a set today, not only because I love that sound but also because the D'addario's are silky/smooth and are supposedly very finger friendly.

 

Whatever the bass, use a foam mute under the strings near the bridge and adjust the tone knob down to taste.

 

I'm not sure if it's possible to emulate the slap sound.

On an upright the click sound comes from the strings striking the fingerboard. Sometimes a piezo pickup is mounted to the fingerboard, and the signal is sent through a different channel than the bridge pickup. The sound is woody as the fingerboard is made of wood.

Slap on an electric bass the click sound is the strings striking the frets if I'm not mistaken. Maybe this is OK, just different. I suppose you could try it on a fretless electric bass.

 

This might work, but your music will sound like you used a bass guitar and added slaps.

 

Closest I could come up with is a double thump, single pop triplet. And ghost the upstroke slap. You're not going to fool anyone. But if you get a rocking feel, I don't think they'll care.

It might take a bit of work to make it flow. But if you nail it I expect you'd have a useful tool on the belt. Possibly a signature move. I've never heard of anyone else doing it.

Also, if double slaps don't come naturally, you could try a single slap and double pop. And ghost that first pop. Once you get the basics, there's how to slap upright tutorials on YouTube you could adapt to the technique for a bit of variety.

Edit. I'm a dummy. Slap with the right thumb. Then all the left hand fingers. And finish with a pop on the octave. So much easier.

 

Where in Oregon? I have an upright in storage that I'd happily lend you for however long you needed to record. It is just sitting in the dark gathering dust...

As for using the electric, definitely a sponge under the strings near the bridge for the decay... as for the slap, a guy could get creative and fashion a wooden block to fit between the neck and pickup that sat slightly prouder than the upper frets. You'd still be able to fret down low and get the wooden "slap"... set your pickup lower into the body to avoid hitting the strings on it.

FWIW, I play in an old time string band. A set of shoulder injuries (as well as logistics) caused me to gradually wean out the upright. In the past two years, I have built two "Cigar Box" basses that nail the sound and DIY vibe... both are pretty basic and get the job done:





They both sound great and take hard plucking really well. I don't "slap" really, but a heavy right hand yields a very pleasing wood sound. The round bodied bass has a "too short" nut that will pop the A string if I get TOO aggressive with it, but that's rare. The square box is just all around great D:

-robert

 

I'd try to play with a pick and use palm muting to get the notes to have a staccato woody kind of tone. Then I would use ghost notes to emulate the percussive slap sound - I'd copy the signal, high pass one and low pass the other. Throw some compression and slap back on the high passed signal. Just off the top of my head, but sounds fun.

 

Just came across this thread. Love the DIY upright basses.

I’m no expert but from what I’ve gathered in talkbass a very good way to emulate the upright sound is to use non tape wound strings on a short scale. I bet if you had a hollow body it would be even better. That’s probably why the rockabillies like short scale hollow bodies so much.

 

I think a delay pedal set to a slight slapback gets a fairly good rockabilly tone on most basses. The question is whether you want authentic rockabilly sound, or if you just want to invoke the spirit of rockabilly. Unfortunately without a very specific setup, or an actual upright, I think it’s pretty impossible to get the exact right tone. I think someone’s comment about using a fretless is right on the money. They’re way harder to play accurately, but if you can pull it off, there’s much more potential for that woody clack because you’re not slapping a bunch of metal frets.