Mark King
Style Analysis
Itching to get started with some King-sized grooves of your own? We break down the Mark King slap technique and
demonstrate how to incorporate it into your own style...
Mark's slap style is strongly based around the sixteenth note feel, something that is very evident on the bass parts
from the band's early work. For some examples, check out tracks such as 'Love Games', '43', 'Almost There', 'Mr.Pink',
'Hot Water' and 'The Machine Stops'. Since Mark appraoched the bass from a rhythmic perspective, you'll hear that
many of these lines are comprised of continuous sixteenth notes: all the gaps between slaps and pops are filled in with
left hand slaps and ghost notes. This creates an incredibly rhythmic and percussive feel to the bassline, and sounds
almost like bass and percussion playing together.
Example 1
This first example is a Mark King-style line that demonstrates the continuous sixteenth-note idea. Keep a close eye on
the slap guidelines written between the staves here, and remember to start off slowly with a metronome. Increase the
speed as you feel comfortable with the line, and as Mark said, keep that foot tapping!
Playing a figure like this with just the right hand would be almost impossible, but by utilizing both hands it becomes
much simpler. Mark often compares his sixteenth-note slap style to drumming on a tabletop with your hands - this is a
valuable analogy to keep in mind when studying the style.
Example 2
Mark is also fond of incorporating triplets into his slap playing. These are great for marking accents and adding variety
to a groove. These sixteenth note triplets are played by employing a combination of both left and right hands - you'll
see that the main triplet figure is played with the thumb, a left hand slap, followed by another thumb, then a pop.
Make sure you can play this example before moving on to the next.
This material is intended for educational purposes only and must not be copied,
distributed or sold without permission from the copyright owners.
Mark King Style Analysis
Example 3
The following exercise is another sixteenth-note based groove with some sixteenth-note triplets thrown in to make
things even more exciting! Make sure you can play through the tripets in example 2 before working on this one.
Example 4
Of course, you can't play in E all the time! With that in mind, here's a Mark King style line that is based on a more
harmonically varied chord progression. If you want to try and incorporate some of these ideas into your own playing,
I would suggest coming up with some chord progressions of your own and trying some of these ideas out on them.
Watch out for the sixteenth-note figure on the last beats of bars 1 and 3 - the middle two notes are a hammer-on and
a pull-off, followed by a left hand hammer-on. You can hear lines such as this on Level 42 tracks such as 'Out Of Sight
Out Of Mind', 'To Be With You Again', and 'You Can't Blame Louis'.
This material is intended for educational purposes only and must not be copied,
distributed or sold without permission from the copyright owners.
Mark King Style Analysis
Example 5
Finally, here's an example of the galloping slap rhythm that Mark used on tracks such as 'Lessons In Love', 'Eyes Waterfalling', and 'Guaranteed'. Most of this line is played with the thumb making it quite a challenge to maintain for four or
five minutes! Lines like this sound great on mid-tempo tracks and can really drive a song forward.
This material is intended for educational purposes only and must not be copied,
distributed or sold without permission from the copyright owners.