Walking bass

[Venom of God]

I know there are already a million threads on this on here, but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, so:

Until recently, I've been realllly closed minded with music. You wouldn't be able to get me to even consider playing (or listening to) anything that wasn't 80s hair metal, thrash, black or death metal.

School holidays are just about to kick in, and I want to go back next year knowing that I haven't wasted them and that my bass playing has improved ten-fold, and in order to do this I guess I'm going to have to expand my playing to different genres and learn from them!

First off, I would like to get a little bit of a grasp on walking bass, as it's one of those things I've just never thought about but seem kind of important... don't want anything too hard, just an idea of how to play it.

Any suggestions of where to begin or even if someone could just post a cool little 4/4 tab I could work out without hearing anything would be great! I would really rather stay away from any 12 bar blues stuff

Thanks!

[Correlli]

I know what you mean, you could have a whole sub-forum on walking bass.

If you youtube "walking bass", I'm pretty sure you'll see something there.

[Venom of God]

Thanks for the tip, but I'm afraid YouTube is hardly do-able on my connection haha. I live out the back of woop woop, we can't get adsl and our dial-up runs at around 22kbps!

[Correlli]

I quite like the Ray Brown Trio

http://www.amazon.com/Bassics-Best-B...2093998&sr=1-1

[JimK]

Originally Posted by Venom of God

Any suggestions of where to begin...I would really rather stay away from any 12 bar blues stuff

Walking through a 12-bar Blues...is where you begin. Gotta learn the ABCs prior to spelling words, right?
(Not all Blues are equal, either. Blues does not need be slow or limited to 3 chords).

To hear walking bass in a MODAL vibe-
"So What"-Miles Davis (Kind Of Blue w/ Paul Chambers; Ron Carter has a nice version on Spanish Blue).
"Impressions"-John Coltrane (Pat Martino has a killer version on his Consciousness album w/ Tyrone Brown on bass)

Bear in mind there are NOTE choices + your feel (your ability to make your note choices 'swing').

Ed Friedland has some nice books on Walking Bass...

[Luke73]

Let me recommend Hal Leonard's excellent book "Building Walking Basslines" by Ed Friedland.

It will take you right from the very start and give you an excellent schooling on walking.

[ii7-V7]

Another vote for Ed's book. I have it. Its very good. Also, keep listening to walking bass lines.

I've found them to just be a matter of practice and experience. I'm still not great with them, but after all I am a *gasp* guitar player.

But, when I was actually working on them to get a basic level of proficiency here is what I did. I set a metronome at 40 bpm. and played over a chart of super basic progressions...twelve bar blues, etc. and played a basic simple walking bass line just to get from one chord to the next. I then slowly sped the metronome up and added more complex chord changes. Then I went back and did the same basic thing again but this time I tried to work on variation. I went about it by trying to find patterns that I hadn't used before started on different octaves, went in different directions....used 5ths on the "one" beat instead of the roots for subdominant chords, etc.

Perhaps what I just said is too obvious.....oh well, I'm not erasing it at this point.

[Factory Owner]

Another vote for Ed's book as well !

He has a book 1 and book 2 on walking bass. What I found is that you can get extremely dfar with just the first book! If you haven't checked it out yet, I recommend it.

It does help to learn to walk over blues...however, what I noticed is that a lot of my students are just not into the blues (even though it is the foundation of most music)...so I recommended this to my students and noticed exponential growth!

First...growth comes through meaningful experiences. The more meaningful the faster you can internalize something.

So what I teach my students that care to learn about walking bass, but may not be so excited about the blues, is:

First: Grab a chord chart, from online or a book, of a simple song that you like! It can be a rock tune, a hip hop tune, any tune! As long as it has a few chords...you'll be in good shape.

Second: I whip out the Ed book and start applying the concetps.

Instantly, I will notice my students enjoying learning walking bass more, because they can even hear its applications to music that actually speaks to them!

Walking bass does not have to be learned in the jazz or blues setting. Walking bass is really just a bassline that is based off of a quarter-note pulse!

Anyway...if you want to get this down fast...that's my recommend! Keep music meaningful and fun and you will learn fast...really fast!

[ii7-V7]

Great website there Factory Owner!

[Factory Owner]

Thanks for the kind words ii7-V7! I think this site is a great resource!

On topic...Another great resource for walking bass, is Rufis Reid (I know I am spelling his name wrong...the video is not near me at the moment!) anyway his video "The Evolving Bassist" is an excellent resource for walking bass too! He share's what he calls a fool-proof method for walking bass. He also has some great insight toward musicality as well.

Venom God, I hope you found something

ii7-V7, thanks again for the kind word