This is a routine I devised using walking bass lines as a means of practicing and internalising scales and arpeggios. It'll probably be at least a few days getting through it, but if I get through it all twice a week I'll be happy:D
Well here goes:

Arpeggiate each of the following chords, in every key, singing and naming each note of the chord, accross the entire neck:
Dominant seven, Major seven, Minor seven, Minor seven flat five, Minor major seven, Diminished seven, Augmented.

Walk freely around jazz tunes within a five fret range. Each chorus move the range up a semi-tone.

Walk without a fret range, aiming for the following chord tones:
Root. Third, Fifth, Seven, Approach note (semi-tone away from) Root, Approach note of Third, Approach note of Fifth, Approach note of Seventh.

in the following ways:
Scalewise, Chromatic (semi-tone away), Dominant (fifth away), Arpeggio (third away), Indirect resolution (combination of two of the above, one interrupting the other, eg. to land on C on beat one, you might end up on G on beat three, and suddenly sneak a B in on beat four, rather than just playing G on beat four)

Most of this was inspired by Ed Friedland's book Beginning Walking Bass Lines, and is I think a great way of learning fluent walking and just learning scales well.
What does everyone think?

yer gonna be better than jack bruce in no time buddy. keep goin'

Sounds great to me, as long as you have some backing tracks to work with. If you're walking without a backing track you're wasting your time. It's all about interaction.

If you can get your hands on the program Guitar Pro it would help you a lot. It's very easy to write and playback chord progressions, so you can have something to walk over. One of my favorite exercises is to write out chords in GP (either something I made up or something from the Real Book), repeat them infinitely, and then just play with them, increasing the tempo as I'm getting more comfortable. Then I notate in the good ideas I had. You can also write out a drum part to work on interacting with them at the same time.

Friedland's book is excellent, and the backing track CD is excellent as well, but it's not that diverse (mostly blues and rhythm changes) so having the power to quickly make your own, or download tons of famous ones sounds like it would help you in your process. Downloading songs and turning the bass track's volume off and doing your own thing is great as well.

Approach to third, fifth, and seventh, is thtat 2nd, 4th, and 6th?


That looks like a very solid routine to me man, I really need to do more than make new songs and a random hungarian/blues scale mixing in different positons.

Yup, I'm a scale wizard.

Looks like a good routine. As Earthday mentioned, backing tracks are a plus. Also, check out the Double Bass forums to see how they approach waliking

Sounds like a great routine.

Add in some "real world" chords with a fake book / real book and you're golden. I assume you're doing all this with a click too?

"If you're walking without a backing track you're wasting your time. It's all about interaction."

I agree with that. For backing tracks I've got a CD of rock jazz, and reggae drum grooves at various tempos, but for walking etc. I mostly use the Track Builder on www.activebass.com, I find that extremely useful as it gives piano and drums (and bass if you want it) backing to any chords you input in a selection of styles. I've got a couple of jazz tunes like Autumn Leaves arranged on there, and it's my main practice tool.

"Approach to third, fifth, and seventh, is thtat 2nd, 4th, and 6th?"

By Approach I mean a semi-tone away from, so approach to 5th would be sharp 4th, or flat 6th. When approaching a minor third I guess it's either a 2nd or a flat 4th.
I feel my brain straining to calculate this at any practical speed. I'm gonna take this slow and steady, and by the end of the year hopefull it'll all be natural.

The leading tone is often actually a whole tone away from the note you want to play.... Rock n Roll (led zep), I Feel Like Makin Love (some 70's band), You Really Got Me (the kinks)

Some of the notes you're naming are non scale tones which for good or bad can be very discordant. There's something to be said for playing concordantly, and there's other ways to approach notes. I wouldn't use the leading tone every time or it'll get tedious after a while.

Sound like a very complete practice routine to me. But here are a couple of things to ( maybe ) make it more comprehensive/better;

Try walking through your tunes or chords on only one string at a time. Just start from either the top or the bottom on the neck and go untill you run out of frets, then change direction.This is a very good way to get some very valuable shifting practice under your belt while at the same time opening up your eyes so you can see larger portions of the neck in one "view".

( I'm all about combining exercises. And there is probably nothing done in music while performing that is actually singular so this approach will prepare you for "the real world" and... in the above example, you're not really even focused on the shifting aspect as much as just simply finding the correct chord tones so the benefit you gain in shifting comes at a very lost cost to you! It's almost automatic !)

Heres on more thing to think about;

Try arranging your practice time according to keys vs. days. For example; Monday key of C, Tuesday key of F , Wednesday key of Bb ect. Or you can do something like Monday major, Tuesday minor, Wednesday minor 7th ect.

Be creative with this and write out a matrix/list/graph to keep track of what you're doing for each day. You've listed ALOT of material that you cover during each practice session and it may not be possible to cover every single thing each day... thats not a problem if you have a "super schedule" to follow. You can rest assured that if you do ( for example) all your major 7th chords on monday that you''ll revisit them again NEXT monday without the chance of missing anything.

There are a hundred ways to skin this cat and with my own students, I always try to find a cool way to come up with something they can understand and enjoy. Making a practice plan is FUN!

The leading tone is often actually a whole tone away from the note you want to play....

Isn't the leading tone the 7th in the scale? So B if you are in the key of C? which is a half step to C?

Unless your in minor and then it would be a whole step away Ie: G to A... but thats what harmonic minor is for right? Bringing that last note up for the half step leading tone? (well that and the major V chord)

Dude, you have a lot of time on your hands to practice your bass...





and I'm jealous.

Isn't the leading tone the 7th in the scale? So B if you are in the key of C? which is a half step to C?

Unless your in minor and then it would be a whole step away Ie: G to A... but thats what harmonic minor is for right? Bringing that last note up for the half step leading tone? (well that and the major V chord)

It can be either, it sort of depends on the circumstance. A lot of rock is actually in what we call the mixolydian scale, and I'd go as far as to say that in general, the 7th can be played in either place just fine, depending on what's going on with the other chords.

When we name chords, a "7th chord" has a flat 7. If you want to use the normal 7 in a chord, you have to name it a "MAJOR 7th" because the default usage is 1 step down in the "flat" position.

John Philippe Rameau in his Treatise on Harmony (published in 1720) had a minor 7, 7 and augmented 7 - that is, what we would call (respectively) a diminished 7, flat 7 and 7. Their default location for the 7 was a whole step down from the root.

Some theorists say that a "V7" chord exists in *both* major & minor scales - that the V7 has to have a major 3rd and a minor 7th in order to resolve to the tonic properly.

What you really need to do is put together a musical library of samples of different usages of lines & chords.

I'm just going by my musical memory here, but the songs I cited have very prominent whole step leading tones.

So does this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1mV_5-bRPo).

I tend to prefer a whole step down if I'm looking for a note to play like that, and a half step on guitar. What you really need to do is find musical examples of the things you're talking about.

The major 7th is very prominent & used in a similar way in these songs:

1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
Kiss Me - Sixpence None the Richer
Untouchable Face - Ani DiFranco

They're all pretty simple to play on guitar & you may want to learn them to see what the major 7th does.

It has a *very* different character from the flat 7th of the songs I've already cited. Neither is right or wrong, and which you use depends on what you want to do - I tend to think of a major 7th as very sweet sounding, and a flat 7th as more blues/rock sounding.

There are also different ways of approaching the note of the next chord - you can approach it from a 5th above, or you can hang on that note from the previous chord and let the band shift above you. Part of the fun of bass is legitimizing the various ways you want to transition into the next chord and making it work with the chord currently being played.