How to Play Walking Bass Lines and Chords in a Blues Progression
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Do you admire how great bassists can effortlessly “walk” their way through any blues progression, but don’t have aHow to Play Walking Bass Lines and Chords in a Blues Progression
Do you admire how great bassists can effortlessly “walk” their way through any blues progression, but don’t have a clue how they do it? Well, here’s your chance to become enlightened. In addition to developing a greater understanding of the bass’ function within the harmonic structure of a given chord progression, learning how to “walk the blues” will also give you the ability to sound like two players at once. This primer is designed to get you started with a few simple exercises, and then progress to walking through two different 12-bar progressions, adding chordal punctuations, and, ultimately, formulating a complete 12-bar harmonized bass line.
Predominant in jazz, but also essential to blues, a walking bass line basically serves two functions: 1) To anchor the bottom end, while defining root motion and other harmonic information pertinent to a chord progression, and 2) To provide rhythmic propulsion. The preliminary rules are pretty simple: Play uninterrupted quarter notes, and aim for chord tones on the strong downbeats (beats one and three) mixed with non-chord passing tones on the weaker upbeats (beats two and four).
BABY STEPS
Before attempting to tackle an entire 12-bar blues progression, let’s begin with something shorter and simpler. Ex. 1a paraphrases the repeating two-bar, D9-C9 bass vamp from Quincy Jones’ classic jazz standard “Killer Joe.” Check out how the notes outline each chord with its root, 5, and root (D-A-D and C-G-C), followed by a common chromatic passing tone (Db/C#) into the next chord. Any bassist would undoubtedly finger this “3-3-3-2-1-1-1-2,” but here we’re using the second finger exclusively to play every note in preparation for accommodating the pending D9 and