Learning Walking Bass

[Frenchy-Lefty]

1. I learned with Ed Friedland's Walking Bass books (Hal Leonard). I strongly recommend that. Most Youtube instruction videos are bad.

2. Then I practiced some slow or mid tempo standards with other mediocre jazz apprentice musicians.

3. Hard work: I got decent eventually but pulling a great bebop walking bass is hard because you should avoid starting every chord on the root. I still struggle with not making my lines boring

4. There are about 4 or 5 different rules for the passing notes connecting Roots, Third, Fith or Sevenths on which you land on the downbeats.

 

[Wasnex]

3. Hard work: I got decent eventually but pulling a great bebop walking bass is hard because you should avoid starting every chord on the root. I still struggle with not making my lines boring

IMHO Bebop is sort the the pinnacle of swing evolution rather than where you should start.

I always felt All of Me was fairly easy to play. It modulates, but there is not a lot of altered or ambiguous harmony to worry about. The harmony and melody are very consonant so it's tends to be easy to hear and memorize the changes.

I consider myself mostly self-taught. I played along with recordings for several years before I went to college and studied theory. Then after I developed some foundation in music theory I bought the Real Book 5th Edition and started working through tunes.

When I am working up a new tune I go as slow as needed, so that I can think about what I am doing. When I first started learning to read chord notation, I might just work on one or two bars at a time. I didn't necessarily even play in tempo. So if I was struggling to work out the notes in a chord, I played them as they came to mind and restarted or repeated a bar as often as necessary. Over time as I become more proficient, I would start playing in tempo, and then slowly increase the tempo. The goal was to play the tune in enough that I had no trouble going faster than it would be performed. When I worked on a new tune, the process started over.

If you have any piano chops, it can be helpful to do this at the keyboard as well. That way you can play chords in your right hand, and then experiment with walking lines with the your left hand. When I was in college, I typically learned new musical theory concepts in class, studied them on piano in conjunction with a written class assignment. Afterwards I would apply the new knowledge to my primary instrument, bass.

 

[LordRyan]

If you are walking quarter notes use either three scale notes, three chord notes, or three up or down root-fifth-octave and then approach each new chord root from a half-step above or below on the last beat of the previous measure. The I Chord will often be two bars so there is room to play some scale notes such as root-third-fourth then chromatic approach note up to fifth-third-root chord notes and then chromatic approach to the next chord root.

 

[FatStringer52]

This wil get you well on your way . . .

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[MarkM13]

A good teacher can get you where you want to be quicker and easier than on your own. You have to make sure your goals and the teacher's goals are aligned.

This times 10. I have ALOT of theory background but getting it to the fretboard in an efficient manner was frustrating. Took a few lessons with a heavy local that didn't teach me anything I wasn't doing. The I hooked up with Todd Johnson and BAM! It all started coming together. You have to know basic diatonic chord/scale theory. But once that's solid, find someone that can help you organize the theory onto the fretboard.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Rule #1, always hit the 1.
Your fellow players will appreciate it.
The others are your choice.

And then there are no rules it's walking bass.
Enjoy,
Dirk

 

[Smooth_bass88]

Get some transcriptions and have at it. Time and patience is key; just like skateboarding or calculus or sushi rolling or leaning to throw the perfect curveball- you'll get it right with lots and lots of practice.

 

[neal davis]

Get a good two feel to start playing Triadic bass lines.

Remember with 135 notes of the chord you have all of these 2 note combinations in 1 octave

11, 88, 18, 81, 15, 51 , 85, 58, 13, 31, 83, 38, 35, 53, (33, 55)

When you start doing a two feel limit yourself at first to play only 15 or 85 and resolve to the closest root of the next chord, do the same thing with 13,83, eventually you start to hear logical resolutions.

Start adding in 135, 153, add passing tones whether the notes are in the scale or choromatic ones.

Just start slow but hear the resolutions.

 

[Sid s]

I learned a thing or two from Invalid Link Removed

 

[Malcolm35]

The old Country walking bass line of targeting the next chord's root, now miss it by one, two or three frets and walk to it one fret at a time and be on it for the change is kinda the dirt simple basic walking thing I do.

Sometime you do this diatonic and not chromatic. Sometime you lead with the next chord's dominant note, i.e. R-3-5-X.

My point all kinds of ways to walk, but, it all gets around to doing something that lets you move to the next chord. I normally go chromatic and miss the next root by one, two, or three frets, because it's a simple way of going about the walk.

My music is Country, Rock and Praise. I'd only walk Praise between verses, and my Rock is a basic I-IV-V so Country is the only thing I walk between chords. Jazz is not something I often get off into.

Offered what it's worth. My point being it need not be fancy.

Happy trails.

 

[LowActionHero]

In my experience there are two kinds of walking bass lines players.

1) The guy/gal who simply learned the bass lines to famous songs (like Pride and Joy) and simply plays those tried and true walking lines over and over.... having no idea WHY thise bass lines work.

Don't be the first guy.

Too late...

 

[Frenchy-Lefty]

Jazz vs Blues

There is a significant difference between a walking bass in a blues/swing contect and a real jazz music walking bass.
In the blues context you have 3 chords and your goal is to pretty much always start every chord on root. It is very easy to learn and tough to screw up. You can learn that in a few days.

In the jazz walking bass you need to find a smooth path to connect the triad notes of rapidly and frequently changing chords. It should sound like your are driving steadily a 1958 Cadillac convertivle at 55bmph on a country road.

Not all basslines in jazz are walking bass, for exemple, bossa inspired tunes such as Desafinado or Blue Bossa are just Roots/Fithth/Octave on a latin beat.

What I found the most difficult was to find other intermediate players to play with and hone my jazz skills. Everyone was either too good for me or not ready to play jazz

 

[teh-slb]

I have a bass teacher now who wants to take me back and teach me his walking bass method. Which is learning his vocabulary over the same jazz blues. Different iterations of 1-3-5 patterns with half step above below I’m talking many different variations and fingerings of the same thing. Kinda brutal, Monotonous.

Don't want to be that guy, but learning pretty much anything well involves lots of repetition.

Chuck Isreals maybe just cause I kinda know his family.

Could you get in touch with him, maybe take him out for dinner? He could also weigh in on the issue.

(I wish I would be in the position to take Chuck Israels out to dinner to ask him about walking bass )

 

[thabassmon]

+1 for theory and transcription.

How 'bout play through standards using diatonic patterns like
1 2 3 5, 8 7 6 5 etc

When you get a nice feel and flow happening try substituting the note on the fourth beat to chromatically link up with the root of the next chord.

So a ii V I in C (quarter notes)
D E F A, G F E D, C D E G, C B A G
With chromatic approach notes
D E F Ab, G F E Db, C etc

Then combine both.

Really basic but just a practical exercise. Tunes like Autumn Leaves, Softly As In The Morning Sunrise, All the Things You Are. They are great tunes to try it on.

 

[Laurent]

Another vote for Ed Friedland's Walking bass line book.
All his bass books are terrific plus he is a working and touring bass player so he keeps it real!
Highly recommended.

 

[LowActionHero]

Too late...

OK, All (well most) joking aside, I guess I should mention I do know a LITTLE theory, and while I do learn mostly from lines I hear and like and think will be useful, I also analyze em to see what notes are in there, how I would change it to major or minor if needed, etc.
(Pride and Joy was one of em, and The Sky Is Crying)

I've also watched a few vids on building your own from Scott and others, along with Bass Studies. Definitely worth learning the theory, which I'm still working on.

 

[groooooove]

the ed friedland book "building walking bass lines" is fantastic.

as always, playing music with other musicians is always the best way, as well as getting a great teacher. but, as far as texts go, ed's book is spot on.

 

[pappabass]

Never has been my strong point!! I can't seem to repeat the pattern over & over

 

[micguy]

Walking bass lines can be approached from theory, and it won't hurt to learn that, but in the end, if you're doing a lot of mental processing to figure out what the next note is, you'll never be fluid at it. A lot of learning walking bass is trial and error - building your ear muscles so you "know" where to go without having to think. When I look at a chord chart, when I see I'm going to be on A, I know how to get/walk there without conscious thinking.

I know a lot of folks will disagree, but you need to budget time doing "stumbling bass" (trial and error) - working oh your ears and muscle memory - theory alone won't get you where you need to go.

 

[Carter Reid]

Miles Davis asked Dizzy Gillespie how be a better horn player. Dizzy said: "Learn to play piano." I think that a good place to start (or really where I listen) is with "stride" or "boogie woogie" piano players' left hands. I'm a pretty odd guitar player and I have always had difficulty finding anyone to play with so I tried to learn the bass lines on the lower four strings of my guitar. In the sixties it was sometimes called "bass lead" and the lead guitar doubled the bass and played the breaks and other than that they picked their noses.