Slap happy

Written by Dermot Watson on Thursday, 01 April 2010

One of the most distinctive ways to play is slapping, where the bass player almost plays the neck as a rhythm instrument. I caught up with Nick Funke, a ridiculously talented multi-instrumentalist and fantastic slap bass player, to find out more about this monster of an instrument and how you go about producing that distinctive rockabilly drive.

Can you tell us a little bit about your bass?

It’s a Czech made instrument that I bought in 2002 from a German seller called Thomann. They’ve got this industrial sized building in the middle of nowhere.

Is it solid wood?

The top is solid and the back and sides are laminated. Now that I play hillbilly and rockabilly I probably should have gotten one with a laminated top as well. It can become incredibly boomy [with a solid top]. I used to play with an Irish folk/punk band in Germany. For two or three songs I played double bass and it was difficult to get a decent sound with their distorted guitars.

What kind of pickup are you using?

The pickup is K &K Bassmaster Rockabilly with a dual channel mixer.

Wow...that sounds serious!

It ‘s a really good system because you’ve got one pickup under the fretboard and one in the bridge. Both come into one jack and then you’ve got a stereo cable coming into a preamp. This is split again so you’ve got an equalizer for each channel and then you’ve got two knobs to dial in the balance between the bridge and the neck signal. It gives you a really nice not overly compressed sound that works well both recording and live.

So you turn up the neck signal if you want a really big slap?

Yes, but because it’s so good you don’t need to turn up the neck much unless you’re playing psychobilly.

I notice that you’ve started using Weedwacker strings…

Yes, they’re nylon with a Kevlar core. They’re really low tension which is nice, but they’re incredibly thick which is less nice. Before that I used Rotosounds which were nylon core with a metal wound A and E string. They are quite high in tension and the slap was too harsh...it sounded to metallic. They’re also not the best quality as the metal winding came off after a while.

I’m presuming that most people who use the Weedwackers are rockabilly or rock players rather than jazz players?

Yes, and you do pay for the nice slap sound with a loss of sustain...they’re not as clear as steel strings. They’re OK if you just play fifths [the note a fifth interval away from your root] and just want short notes.

How long have you been playing?

I bought it in 2002 and then started playing it, but I moved to England in 2005 and didn’t touch it for 3 years until I had it shipped over.

I see you’ve got some 50s iconography on there...it seems to be a rite of passage for double bass players?

Yes, it’s a little bit silly but I quite like it. I’ve got the lady on the front with an Indian Motorcycle logo on the back.

Does playing double bass require a lot of strength?

You don’t need that much strength...and this is something you have to tell yourself over and over again. When you’ve been playing guitar for a while and pick this up, you’re faced with the huge thing with high action, huge strings...so you think you have to put a lot of force into it. [If you do] you can’t play fast and you can’t play nicely. You don’t need that much strength.

Sometimes you see a lot of rockabilly and psychobilly players and they seem to have an iron arm and shoulder. If you look at Lee Rocker [of The Stray Cats] I don’t know what he must feel like when he gets off stage. If you have quite a high action, the bass and the strings do a lot of the work anyway.

How would you describe the position of your right hand when slapping?

First of all, you have to be reasonably loose. You use all of your arm and all of your wrist but try and do it as loosely as possible.

So do you actually grab the strings?

No, this is one of the things that people do wrong. They think you need to arch your fingers and make a claw, put it underneath the string and then pull it up and then you have to suddenly stretch your hand and then slap it to get the eighth or the sixteenth but this isn’t really necessary.

Using the fleshy bit of your fingertip is enough. If you angle it slightly and move the hand in a circular motion and bring it next to the string and pull it off...that’s all that’s needed.

Do you play other kinds of music?

No, not really. I sometimes like to play old time (string band and hillbilly) bass, but I also like lots of the 30s and 40s boogie/western swing double bass players like Fred Maddox of The Maddox Brothers and Rose... proto rockabilly stuff

Who else do you think double bass players should listen to?

Bill Black, obviously because not only did he play for Elvis but he played for Johnny Horton on his rockabilly recordings. They’re just incredibly fun to listen to...they’re all over the place but they’re not like the mindless athletic double bass playing that you sometimes hear.

I sometimes think of Scotty Moore as a jazz guitar player playing rock and roll and rockabilly. Would you say the same about Bill Black as a bass player?

No, not really. I don’t want to sell him short but I don’t think so. The black Sun bass players certainly had more of a ‘jazzy thing’. Those R’n’B guys that were there before Sam Phillips started recording the white guys....I think they had the more interesting bass lines. On a lot of Sun and 40s hillbilly stuff, the bass was there to ‘make up’ for drums.

If you look at the original Mystery Train by Little Junior’s Blue Flames, it’s got some great bass playing. If you look at hillbilly, the double bass wasn’t meant to be fancy. When the band started dressing up in suits and cowboy attire, the double bass player was usually the last to change...they were still the ‘hillbilly’ in the band...the clown.

Is there a different approach to playing western swing on double bass? The guitar tends to take more of a ‘comping’ role, like in big bands, does the bass reflect this?

The bass was usually playing bass lines, and not just the fifth...they were walking quite a bit. If you listen to Hank Thompson, Bob Wills and Milton Brown (Milton Brown especially) their bass players were walking all over the place.

Do you walk much?

Not really....it depends on the song. Sometimes it carries the song, sometimes it makes it too complicated. Less, a lot of the time, is more.

Are there any contemporary double bass players that you listen to?

I think that Mark Rubin is fantastic. He used to play bass and tuba in the Bad Livers. After they split up he formed a great klezmer band. [Editor’s note: I was lucky enough to see Mark play in an ‘all star’ klezmer band, as well as seeing his band mate the banjo player Danny Barnes play with Charlie Louvin. My girlfriend also made her entry into bluegrass via The Bad Livers].

Starting on any instrument can be intimidating. Do you have any advice for new double bass players?

First of all you have to make sure that you have the pin at the right length. A lot of people have it too high or too low. The nut should be level with your eyes....that’s a rule of thumb. You then just have to get used to having that instrument in your hands. The idea is that you rest the shoulder in your hip and let it lean against you so that you have both hands free to play. What I do quite a lot when I slap is that I turn it around more so that it’s between my knees. What’s nice is that your hand and arm are at the right angle to the strings.

What kind of formal music education do you have?

Not much....my parents did their best to give me a well rounded education in music but I can’t read music, for example. It would take me hours and hours.

I did have lessons in my teens, but it never clicked in my head. I would sit there, pretend to be dafter than I was until they played it 3 or 4 times. Then I’d play it by ear – I’d look at the sheet but I wouldn’t read it. But I would like to read to have that additional route into music...I’ve had it in mind to do that for 10 years! My dad was a classically trained pianist from a young age. He just can’t understand how I could play music without being able to read.

The double bass is a big, unwieldy instrument. Have the logistics of getting it around ever been a problem?

No, I’m a big unwieldy guy so we get along together well. It can become an issue sometimes, especially when the council doesn’t cut the trees low enough and you’ve got all these overhead signs. But, I don’t get much exercise so this is my workout. This is ungrounded, but I’ve got this weird thing about electric stand up basses...I just don’t 'get' them.