Higher Ground Bass tab video
The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Make your own Higher Ground tab video, freeNo editing. No card. 10 minutes free.- Instrument
- Bass
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Tuning
- E A D G
- Tempo
- 144 BPM
About this riff
Flea's line is a driving sixteenth-note slap groove built around thumbing octaves that climb and descend the neck, so it's a great study in thumb-and-pop technique and left-hand muting for tight, percussive articulation. The main hook stays largely on the E and A strings, but keeping it clean and consistent at 144 BPM is the real challenge rather than any exotic fingering. Note that Flea switches to fingerstyle on parts of the chorus, so learning it teaches you to move between slap and plucked feels within one song.
Did you know?
The Chili Peppers took Stevie Wonder's 1973 original and re-worked it for a smaller lineup: Flea's slap bass replaced the keyboard part and Frusciante played a different guitar melody than Wonder's. Released on 1989's Mother's Milk, it became one of the band's first hits and helped push the album to commercial success, and its slap bass line made it a longtime favorite among bass players.
FAQ
Is this the real audio?
The audio is rendered from a high-quality SoundFont (FluidR3), so it plays for real. It is not the original master recording.
Can I make my own Higher Ground tab video?
Yes. Upload your file to Tab2Vid and export a 9:16 or 16:9 video with real audio in about a minute. The free plan needs no credit card.