Louis Johnson Slap Bass Solo [Bass tab+notation]
🎵 Stomp Bass Solo Tab — Brothers Johnson
채널: thomas iu
This is the opening solo played by Louis Johnson (LJ) in his renowned instruction video for slap bass. It is essentially a “groove” solo, playing different groove ideas one after another. The whole solo is based on the box shape E minor pentatonic scale.
Some interesting points:
Throughout the solo LJ is employing “left hand slap” to fill out 16th notes. If you don’t know what that is, you can check out this mini lesson https://youtu.be/-octYg6zj3Q?t=1684
Bar 18 (0:53) LJ originally played the double stop in beat 1 by bending with his index & ring fingers (he has large hands!) . It is tough on guys like me with average sized hands. My work-around is to play with index & pinky, then play a quick slide up to mimic the bend.
*Oops! I made a mistake. LJ originally played A hammering on to B on beat 3, but I played G hammering on to A. It sounded good, so I went with it. Its still in the key anyway.
Bar 27 (1:17) LJ break away from the predictable groove pattern by playing a 3-note-pattern over regular 16th note rhythm.
Bar 33-34 (1:29) the phrase is played over the barline to beat one, hitting the next low E on beat 2. Is this by accident? Did he do that on purpose? I don’t know haha.
Transcription:
Standard Notation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/100B1V0Yagc6XLryNAoH6F0ewn7nHLjHT/view?usp=sharing
TAB: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16U7B-g8uAT5zHNK3epfdloHEahb8SIvk/view?usp=sharing
Transcribed from:
https://youtu.be/B1Jzu3nl89Q