[BluesKat]

Ok, look most of ya'll have see the larrviee guitar clip by Justin King if not go to google, go under videos and type in "Justin King". Well for about the past year I have been tryin' to figure it out, just slap guitar in general. My questions are: one what type of music would you classify that in? Two do you slap with your thumb or pop the string with your pointer finger, will someone explain this to me!

[dadfad]

It's kind of contemporary-experimental. There are several other artists who do it. The technique was first being developed back in the early 70s by Michael Hedges and Preston Reed. Reed is probably the best alive at using the techniques today (Hedges died a couple of years ago). Kaki King is also good, and several others.

It relies heavily on the use of altered tunings and acoustic-electronics. Once you get into it and figure out how to work with the tunings, get the necessary electronics in place and the hand-slap rhythms together, it isn't all that difficult. Not easy, but not too tough. You get the soundings with the use of both hands. With your normal picking hand (right-hand for righties) you generally use your thumb, slapping it as in playing bass. You might also use your fingers (held together) for slapping (or tapping). The right hand is also used off of the strings as well for tapping/patting the guitar box wood for a percussive rhythms between string-slap/taps (tapping different body areas... the lower top, upper top, sides, etc... gives different tap-sounds. Like different drums do.). You also tap-slap with the left hand on the strings on the neck. This is where the altered-tunings come in. You can form chords or partial-chords on the neck hammering with your left-hand (often with the thumb behind the neck, finger(s) over the top of the neck for a good strong quick hammered sort of "pinch" with the thumb in back and fingers over the top hammering a barre across several frets. You can even tune your guitar into a couple of different partial open chords at the same time (one tuning on upper strings and another on lower strings), where the fingers hammer/barre in different locations to give a number of different chords or chord-fragments. The right hand then picks, taps or slaps harmonizing notes or lines over those left-hand barres.

Basically, the left hand slaps rhythm while the right hand slaps lead. The use of internal and external electronics is where you get adequate sustain for them to be heard by the audience as you play them over each other.

The technique is pretty impressive to an audience and so is great at a gig. However, a little bit goes a long way (as anyone who has ever sat through a one-hour set of Reed doing slap-pop stuff soon finds out). The down-side is that (for a typical acoustic solo-gig guitarist) there's a lot of "set-up" involved, from the altered-tunings necessary to the use of electronics that don't work particularly well when doing more "normal" acoustic stuff. So in effect you more-less have to have a specific set-up just for the tune(s) done in this style. I worked on a couple of Reed-tunes for awhile ("Border Town" and "Slap Funk") and got them down pretty well. I used one or the other a few times at acoustic solo gigs as a "set-closer" and the listeners did think it was great stuff, but it was a major pain to have a whole dedicated-guitar set-up on stage just for a single tune, so I quit before long. But it is pretty impressive sounding stuff. Preston Reed occasionally will give instructional work-shops on playing in the style.

[laker0902]

Kaki King is also amazing at it. You should check some of her stuff out if you're interested.

[ninjato]

The technique is pretty impressive to an audience and so is great at a gig. However, a little bit goes a long way (as anyone who has ever sat through a one-hour set of Reed doing slap-pop stuff soon finds out).

I agree. When I first saw the Justin King video, I was like WOW!!! I went and found a few MP3's of him doing stuff like that and by the 4th song, it was getting old.

[BluesKat]

I just figured it would be a cool style to learn so at a gig I could be playing some blues stuff then whip out my acoustic and play some slap for one song.

[Will_Wood]

It wouldn't be that easy. You'd have to have all the mics and electronics for your acoustic. You can't just play your acoustic and have that be that. You need a lot of stuff.

[BluesKat]

Well I can play it pretty well now with out anything, are you talking about have alot of mics for resonation or so people can hear the precussion beats?

[dadfad]

Well I can play it pretty well now with out anything, are you talking about have alot of mics for resonation or so people can hear the precussion beats?

If you're just playing it just for yourself or when learning, it sounds reasonably decent sitting there in your room. But playing it in front of an audience in order to balance all the tones you need elecronics. I was given a list of what Reed uses by Preston himself (including amp settings) and this was a gig of only maybe a hundred people. I met a guy named Richard Leo Johnson just a few years ago at a gig opening for... some lame acoustic-group... The California Guitar Trio I think it was... who used a somewhat similar approach to playing (but a little more complex and more true-fingerstyle added) who used a double-necked Taylor 12+12 twelve string custom built for him, hammer/tapping one neck while fingerstyling on the other. He had similar electronics factory-installed inside which he then could just plug into a house PA system. That made it quite a bit simpler (but really expensive!). To perform those kinds of tunes publicly at a decent sized gig you really need added-electronics for it to be effective.