KEY TO WALKING

[Frank77]

What is the key that unlocked walking bass for you?

Ed Friedland's book on walking bass. It's seriously very good, brings each concept progressively than shows examples of how you can combine them together.

I find walking bass is like a muscle: I tend to lose it if I don't use it. When this happens I go back to this book and work through the exercises to get me going again.

 

[kalanb]

What everyone else says, plus listening to a lot of jazz. I have a theoretical command and intellectual understanding of what goes into walking bass lines but don’t listen to enough jazz to put it all together.

 

[Major Seven]

What is the key that unlocked walking bass for you?

Carol Kaye

 

[Willie5String]

What is the key that unlocked walking bass for you?

Know your arpeggios, know your scales, use chromatics.

 

[Killing Floor]

No sandals on stage.

 

[mr80htz]

What is the key that unlocked walking bass for you?

Lead in notes to the next chord that are a semitone above or lower. Ex...oving into a C chord and playing either a B or a C#. There's a bunch of other ideas (like arpeggios) but that's the main one.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Jazz Ensembles at Berklee, and private lessons.
Root on the 1 (downbeat).
Know your major and minor scales in all keys.
Grab a Real book, and try and find some Jazz recordings without bass, they do exist.

And I agree real practice is the way.

 

[kirkplunkett]

I started playing bass with a blues band when I was 14. The other band members were all in their late 20s and early 30s. The guitar player was also a local bass player for other blues bands. (We lived on the same street and practiced at his house, which made things easy for me.)

He first taught me a riding/pedal bassline, which is a single note bassline that really helps learn the feel of the blues and how to swing… Further On Down the Road (Eric Clapton) and Tush (ZZ Top) are both good, popular examples.

After that, I learned three “basslines” for walking blues:

1. 1, 3, 5, b7
2. 8 (octave), b7, 6, 5
3. 1, 8, b7, 5

I later learned that these are (mostly) based on arpeggios for Dominant chords.

The next challenge was to begin replacing the bassline with chromatic notes when changing chords. (i.e. When changing to the 4 chord or walking back down to the 1.)

A 12 bar blues usually follows this formula:

• Four times on the 1.
• Two times on the 4.
• Two times on the 1.
• One time on the 5.
• One time on the 4.
• Two times on the 1.

Tommy Shannon uses all of these very often. I agree that he is a great learning example for walking bass.

Walking bass with Jazz becomes a little more involved, and can take knowing some theory, depending on the style.

I would say that walking country music can also be a little more difficult when learning because the chords tend to be simpler than blues and jazz chords, which means there are less notes in the arpeggios. Dominant chords usually have 4 notes which makes it easier because each “count” gets a new note.

This is obviously a simplification of what actually going on in most walking basslines, but it was a great jumping off point for me as a young player. I hope it can help you too.

Let me know if any of the explanations are too vague, and I will try to make a finer point.

 

[micguy]

Walking bass is grace notes taken to the natural limit. You can start with a grace note here and there, and gradually let the grace notes take over. You're not going to become a great walking bass player after a lesson or two on it - it takes lots of practice, and getting things OUT of your head, to where it becomes second nature.

 

[Thumpin6string]

This helped me.

 

[Sam Dingle]

Start with a blues and transcribe bass lines note for note by the greats, Paul Chambers, Ray Brown, Percy Heath is a great one to start with. I recommend transcribing this bass line and working out how he moves through the F blues changes:

 

[groooooove]

What is the key that unlocked walking bass for you?

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Walking-Bass-Lines-Builders/dp/0793542049

as a teacher, i'm always checking out different/new/classic/any books on this topic.

i've never found a better walking bass book than this. there are a few typos, and a few things i add to it for my students, but this book is excellent.

particularly the second half/last few pages.

if you master each topic one at a time, by the end you can seriously walk.

 

[Ric5]

What is the key that unlocked walking bass for you?

unlock ... well to me walking bass came pretty naturally ... my advice ... feel the rhythm.

 

[pbassnut]

What is the key that unlocked walking bass for you?

I play a lot of blues and some country ... both of which have shuffle grooves that require walking bass lines. In addition, I listen to a lot of jazz and have played some of the simpler "soul/jazz" grooves as set openers and/or closers but I am not, I repeat, NOT an expert. A simple approach to get you started is to play the 1-3-5 triad of whatever chord you're on and play a half step above or below the root note of the next chord on the beat just before the change. In order to make your walk sound smooth, only use intervals a major third (or less) when ascending and a major sixth * (or more) when descending. Depending on the chord sequence and timing, there are all kinds of chromatic runs you can do between chord roots. On chord changes coming every two beats, you can just play the root of the current chord followed immediately by a half step above or below the root of the next change. Generally speaking, the faster the tempo, the more freedom you have with your choices of passing tones between chord roots. Now this is totally a Sears & Roebuck approach to get you started ... I have no doubt that we have a bunch of TalkBass friends who play a lot of jazz and can add WWWAAAYYY more advanced stuff to this conversation (which I would love to hear).

* A minor sixth interval can sound smooth enought going down if the tempo is fast enough and/or it also works for a quick two beat descending turnaround to the 5 but that's just my own taste ... certainly not a hard and fast rule.

 

[oren]

As with walking on your feet, think about where you’re going and how you want to get there more than where you are.

To expand a little on this sage advice -
- You have a destination: the next chord.
- You have a certain amount of time (measures) to get there.
- Your walking pace is mostly set as quarter notes.
- You know you want to arrive at your destination on a strong chord tone, usually but not always the root. This requires knowing what the chord tones are (arpeggios).
- The subtle art in walking is picking the notes you play along the way to the next chord. This is where knowing your scales, and what scales fit with the different types of chords, comes into play.

So a simple example of a ii7-V7 change with a bar each of Dm7, and G7: let’s say you start on D, the root of the first chord, and you want to get to G, the root of the second chord. You have already played the first note of the measure so you have three notes left to get to that G. You know that a minor scale goes with the minor chord you’re on, so you can simply walk up the scale towards the the G: D-E-F. But that leaves you with one more note to fill before getting to your destination on time. You can choose to pick another chord tone in the Dm7 chord, the A, and then come down to the G (D-E-F-A-G), which is a pretty line, or you could choose to insert a chromatic (not in the scale or chord) passing tone to get there (D-E-F-F#-G, or even D-E-F-Ab-G) both of which have a more bluesy feel.

There’s no real trick to learning this stuff - as others have suggested there are lots of good resources available and nothing beats studying in detail how the masters have done it. Having the chords and scales in your mind and under your fingers is crucial, all up and down the fingerboard so you can navigate in real time appropriately to respond to what your band mates are doing. One great player to listen to is Leroy Vinnegar - there was a reason his nickname was “The Walker”.

Take your time learning and enjoy it - there’s really no better feeling than being able to drive a hard swinging band with your walking lines!

 

[GodinFan]

Mike Downes' The Jazz Bass Line Book got me going. I've worked out of Ed Friedland's book too.

 

[MVE]

I'm an "overanalytical" personality type, so for me, the key for me (paradoxically) was: Listening is more important than thinking. It's more important to learn bass lines than algorithms for making bass lines. Stop searching for a magic "formula" and just play the **** tune already. Jazz is out in the world waiting to be discovered, not inside of my head.

(Disclaimer I'm pretty bad at jazz, so take my advice for what it's worth!)

Respectfully, I disagree with this strongly.
Listening and copying other people’s basslines will only get you so far. You might be able to play some songs but you’ll never understand why they chose the notes they did.
Walking bass lines, in the most simplified definition, which is usually a good place to start, are just arpeggiated chords.
Learn to play arpeggios Maj7, Maj6, min7, Dominant and diminished. In all keys to a metronome.
After you learn that, walking is easy.

Playing interesting inventive bass lines will take years of study, but knowing and being able to play the chords is primarily and prerequisite.

 

[Matthew_84]

Mike Downes' The Jazz Bass Line Book got me going. I've worked out of Ed Friedland's book too.

I second the recommendation for Mike Downes’ book - it is great. I have Ed Friedland’s book, but I personally liked Ed Fuqua’s “Walking Bassics” a little bit more, as I think it’s a little more jazz-focussed (which was my hope).

With both of the Friedland and Fuqua books, I really unlocked their potential when I stopped skimming over the writing in between exercises, and realized the exercises weren’t necessarily just to be repeated, but used as building blocks to learning new tunes and creating your own voice, they just show you how to do it through exercises.

 

[gtmalone]

I put this together for a new-to-jazz bass player some years ago. Some of the ideas mentioned previously are in here. There are examples on fills and transitions I did for another player. Hope you find it useful! Most importantly, have fun!

 

[MichelD]

Learn the arpeggios of all the most common chords in all keys. major, major 7, dominant 7, minor, minor 6, minor 7, minor 7b5, diminished.

Get Keith Rosier's book "The lost art of country bass."

There are many basic country music walking bass lines in there that you can use as groundwork for expanding as far as you wish to study walking bass.