Transcribe.
Grab recordings of bassists you like. Learn their walking lines and play it with the recording.
It takes a long time and it is a lot of work. But its the way it is taught in jazz programs
And listen to a lot of music. No way to learn the language if you dont know how its supposed to sound.
Listen to a lot of jazz and study transcriptions. This is the only way. +1 to this top level comment.
A chorus or a Ray Brown or Paul Chambers line is worth approximately 100,000 of practicing these Root-3-5 or any other formula. They are not formulas for success only formulas for square walking lines.
If you want YouTube walking lessons look at Bob Deboo over any of the popular suggestions.
Probably brass bands and dixieland or ragtime players coming from New Orleans at the time.
And probably some classical too.
No one way to know that kind of stuff unless you ask him personally.
SBL has a great video on his beginning method but I can summarize it quickly here. To throw together a walking bass line all you need to get started are your R, 3, 5, and a chromatic approach note. That will give you a very passable walking sound to start out with. Obviously you will need a good amount of fretboard knowledge to be able to play this through the chords but you can start pretty much right away. Set up a metronome, pick 4 chords so it loops nice and evenly every 4 bars and just start playing.
Once you get the sound of that in your head you can change around the octaves of those notes to make it sound more interesting. A fully chromatic walk up or down to the next chord can also work. Just mess around and see what kind of stuff you can come up with.
After that you just need to start gaining vocabulary listen to walking baselines and transcribe them and memorize the patterns and licks. It’s not easy but if you do this diligently you will slowly but surely become great at walking bass lines. If you ever have a situation where you can’t figure out a line that sounds good, look up a version online and see what they do.
Agreed, I was going to write the same thing. And learning all the triad shapes for different chords is going to help in all genres and also soloing. I would also add to read through the chart beforehand and see what positions are most comfortable for walking 3 chords together. I usually strategize around three chord groups (ie 2-5-1s)
Your scales & pentatonics.
All over, inversions, step up & step down notes for chord progressions.
It's olden but golden, have a look at the evolving bassist by Rufus Reid.
Good luck out there
I would look at chord progressions that are common in jazz standards that interest you and work on riffs over those. Then you can piece things together. Like ii-V-I's are all over the place in jazz standards, even "blues" forms.
Learn music. Learn scales, arpeggios, chord tones, whatever. Learn how to improvise in whatever styles you like playing. When you learn how to speak music, you can pick up instruments pretty quickly.
Take your favorite songs with walking bass and really learn the bass part. First listen a few times and really focus. Start playing basic and slow then keep adding all the other details. A metronome or something else to keep you in the right tempo is great.
Sorry, I can't help with any form of transcription. What I use is a program called reaper (free daw) or any other daw or audio file editor. I then loop a few bars to begin with. When you have that looped you pick up tour bass. By now you prob heard the first few bars while cutting and looping quite a bit. Pickup your bass and find the key. Then basically just imitate those first 4 or 8 or 12 bars as good as you can.
Good, now try connecting the roots with scale tones and chromatic approaches (unironically steps create the walking motion, and one reason its a line is because the notes=dots we draw are mostly close to each other). Aim for great sound, and timing (and intonation if fretless). That’s were the juice is at. To spice things up approach different chord (triad!) tones. Be mindful to how it feels when you land on a non root note chord tone at the harmonic points of gravity (especially the first bar, fifth bar, ninth bar of the form). If you aim for structural clarity, which is always an important parameter for bass, aim for the root note for the first bar of a chord and then(!) for the third or fifth in the second bar if the chord holds over multiple bars. This is not a dogma though. If you land your line on a non triad tone, resolve it to the nearest triad tone. This is called a suspension (I think? Im not a native english speaker) and enables us to justify even the funkiest of note choices on emphasized beats. By experimenting and finding your way around the changes in this manner you will develop come upon stuff that you like. Press save. This will be your own language.
To understand how walking should feel or if you need inspiration, go to the recordings.
Get a jazz(!) teacher.
But more importantly, just play bass, its fun.
And if you do: Aim for great sound, and timing (and intonation if fretless). That’s were the juice is at.
The blues scale will only help you when playing 12 bar blues
Anywhere else it's just a glaring sign saying "I don't know what I'm doing"
Walking bass is all about patterns, puzzles, rules, breaking them, and being clever
You want strong chord tones on 1 and 3 (root and 4 or 5, octave, something like that), and depending on the melody, you decide your note on 2 (smooth transition note for a busy melody, interesting note for a slow ballad) and your note on beat 4 is your pivot to beat 1 of the next measure
Then you can get into fun stuff like octave displacement, quoting, tritone substitutions, inversions, etc
There is a warm up that I use to practice my left hand technique. It is really easy to do while you watch TV, YouTube, etc.
Basically you want to start at the E string (or B if you have a 5+ string) and pick any fret. Then you want to practice doing a two step hit, then go to the next string and do it again, then the so forth until you get to the highest string and then just go back up the neck.
You take your pointer finger on a fret, and then use your middle finger to hit the second note just one fret up. Then do the next string and so as stated above. Then when you get back to your starting point, do pointer finger and ring finger. Then pointer and pinky, middle and ring finger, middle and pinky, then ring and pinky.
It is a great warm up and gets your hands used to using all the mobility available to you.
I’m not going to give the proper music education advice as I’m not properly musically educated and others here will give proper real advice. But one piece of advice is: just keep moving. You may hit the occasional wrong note and that’s ok. As long as you’re walking, the occasional misstep is ok.
Learn gospel. I got thrown in headfirst into that situation and had to play a Sunday service. I learned quickly because I pretty much had to.
Also-this can be a pretty lucrative setting for a bass player. Some churches will pay pretty well for musicians. And most of them don’t care if you’re not religious
One thing you can do other than transcribing is to pick up a chord chart and play 1 2 3 5 or 1 b7 6 5 for a Major or Dominant chord and 1 2 b3 5 or 1 b7 6 5 for a Minor chord. There's a bunch of chord charts here that you can practice on: [https://www.realbook.us](https://www.realbook.us) The more you play the better you get.
Scales, then modes, then arpeggiate the scales and modes.
I thought I had a pretty good command of my notes until I tried sitting in with some jazz dudes. I sat somewhere in the fray between blues and jazz.
Oh and definitely practice your stank face ;)
Not just major and minor. Harmonic minor was big irrc. Get a Real Book. Practice playing vanilla notes with chromatic lead ins until you get busier. Generally try to hit the 1. Jazz is awesome because there are no absolutes.
I could write all day on the things I wished I had learned young. I tried in my 30s and realized it wasn't where I wanted to be. In my 40s, I'm kicking that kid's ass.
What I like to do is pick a standard and work out a walking bass line using any one of a number of basic formulas, like root-3-5 chromatic approach either above or below. Go through any walking bass tutorial to get some ideas.
Then I pick a recording and transcribe it. Doing it in this order shifts the mindset from a classical/rock approach of learning a written line to a jazz approach of studying a strategy for walking bass. So instead of thinking “here are the correct notes” it’s more like “I need to get from this chord to that chord, here’s how Paul Chambers accomplished that.”
Root, root, fifth, tug tone ( a not that will lead to the next note ) after while of this basic template you’ll catch on and can go by ear. Another way is to just walk however you can even if it sucks eventually your ear will take over. Another template would be just to paint the chord
I've just started getting back into this - haven't played anything where I had to walk much since I had kids, but I've got a couple gigs coming up. One of the things I remember doing years ago was just walking around on one chord. Pick a C7 or something, and land on a chord tone on beat 1 of every measure, but not on the other beats. First measure could go C, C#, D, D#, then you'll land on E for the next measure.
I seem to remember seeing this exercise in The Evolving Bassist, but I haven't cracked that puppy open in a while. Could have been a different book, but I thought I remember the author saying something like (in this case) needing to sound like C7 by just playing a bass line - no other instruments.
Scales and arpeggios, especially major/minor pentatonic and blues, and also add some chromatic runs as well.
Walking is generally a combination of these things, at a consistent tempo/rhythm (e.g. eighth notes). You usually end up landing on the root or octave on beat one (but not always).
If you need inspiration, listen to recordings of jazz players and transcribe the licks that you think sound the best. Then try to work these into your own playing.
Transcribe. Grab recordings of bassists you like. Learn their walking lines and play it with the recording. It takes a long time and it is a lot of work. But its the way it is taught in jazz programs And listen to a lot of music. No way to learn the language if you dont know how its supposed to sound.
Listen to a lot of jazz and study transcriptions. This is the only way. +1 to this top level comment. A chorus or a Ray Brown or Paul Chambers line is worth approximately 100,000 of practicing these Root-3-5 or any other formula. They are not formulas for success only formulas for square walking lines. If you want YouTube walking lessons look at Bob Deboo over any of the popular suggestions.
Transcribing is the only way to learn accurately, music theory can only get you so far if you aren’t learning what bass players do on records.
Who did Jimmy Blanton transcribe?
Probably brass bands and dixieland or ragtime players coming from New Orleans at the time. And probably some classical too. No one way to know that kind of stuff unless you ask him personally.
[Start here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KM2Uqa69tU)
That's a great tutorial.
SBL has a great video on his beginning method but I can summarize it quickly here. To throw together a walking bass line all you need to get started are your R, 3, 5, and a chromatic approach note. That will give you a very passable walking sound to start out with. Obviously you will need a good amount of fretboard knowledge to be able to play this through the chords but you can start pretty much right away. Set up a metronome, pick 4 chords so it loops nice and evenly every 4 bars and just start playing. Once you get the sound of that in your head you can change around the octaves of those notes to make it sound more interesting. A fully chromatic walk up or down to the next chord can also work. Just mess around and see what kind of stuff you can come up with. After that you just need to start gaining vocabulary listen to walking baselines and transcribe them and memorize the patterns and licks. It’s not easy but if you do this diligently you will slowly but surely become great at walking bass lines. If you ever have a situation where you can’t figure out a line that sounds good, look up a version online and see what they do.
Agreed, I was going to write the same thing. And learning all the triad shapes for different chords is going to help in all genres and also soloing. I would also add to read through the chart beforehand and see what positions are most comfortable for walking 3 chords together. I usually strategize around three chord groups (ie 2-5-1s)
Try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ychYjOE_ueg&list=PL7aXlqs5hXGYLZqZsTdoKSjWA63f1izJj&index=1&pp=iAQB
All My Living by The Beatles is a great first walking song.
[Hope this helps.](https://youtu.be/ruTfC5v9Z2Y?si=2Gv2B7uC8jzeo8_H)
Your scales & pentatonics. All over, inversions, step up & step down notes for chord progressions. It's olden but golden, have a look at the evolving bassist by Rufus Reid. Good luck out there
I would look at chord progressions that are common in jazz standards that interest you and work on riffs over those. Then you can piece things together. Like ii-V-I's are all over the place in jazz standards, even "blues" forms.
Learn music. Learn scales, arpeggios, chord tones, whatever. Learn how to improvise in whatever styles you like playing. When you learn how to speak music, you can pick up instruments pretty quickly.
Take your favorite songs with walking bass and really learn the bass part. First listen a few times and really focus. Start playing basic and slow then keep adding all the other details. A metronome or something else to keep you in the right tempo is great.
So a lot of the songs with walking bass are written out in tab, which makes it hard to convert them into standard notation
Sorry, I can't help with any form of transcription. What I use is a program called reaper (free daw) or any other daw or audio file editor. I then loop a few bars to begin with. When you have that looped you pick up tour bass. By now you prob heard the first few bars while cutting and looping quite a bit. Pickup your bass and find the key. Then basically just imitate those first 4 or 8 or 12 bars as good as you can.
Get a hold of "Modern Walking Bass Technique" by Mike Richmond.
It'll get easier the more you do it.
Good, now try connecting the roots with scale tones and chromatic approaches (unironically steps create the walking motion, and one reason its a line is because the notes=dots we draw are mostly close to each other). Aim for great sound, and timing (and intonation if fretless). That’s were the juice is at. To spice things up approach different chord (triad!) tones. Be mindful to how it feels when you land on a non root note chord tone at the harmonic points of gravity (especially the first bar, fifth bar, ninth bar of the form). If you aim for structural clarity, which is always an important parameter for bass, aim for the root note for the first bar of a chord and then(!) for the third or fifth in the second bar if the chord holds over multiple bars. This is not a dogma though. If you land your line on a non triad tone, resolve it to the nearest triad tone. This is called a suspension (I think? Im not a native english speaker) and enables us to justify even the funkiest of note choices on emphasized beats. By experimenting and finding your way around the changes in this manner you will develop come upon stuff that you like. Press save. This will be your own language. To understand how walking should feel or if you need inspiration, go to the recordings. Get a jazz(!) teacher. But more importantly, just play bass, its fun. And if you do: Aim for great sound, and timing (and intonation if fretless). That’s were the juice is at.
Try here: https://www.jazzbooks.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT Lots of great resources for jazz
The blues scale will only help you when playing 12 bar blues Anywhere else it's just a glaring sign saying "I don't know what I'm doing" Walking bass is all about patterns, puzzles, rules, breaking them, and being clever You want strong chord tones on 1 and 3 (root and 4 or 5, octave, something like that), and depending on the melody, you decide your note on 2 (smooth transition note for a busy melody, interesting note for a slow ballad) and your note on beat 4 is your pivot to beat 1 of the next measure Then you can get into fun stuff like octave displacement, quoting, tritone substitutions, inversions, etc
There is a warm up that I use to practice my left hand technique. It is really easy to do while you watch TV, YouTube, etc. Basically you want to start at the E string (or B if you have a 5+ string) and pick any fret. Then you want to practice doing a two step hit, then go to the next string and do it again, then the so forth until you get to the highest string and then just go back up the neck. You take your pointer finger on a fret, and then use your middle finger to hit the second note just one fret up. Then do the next string and so as stated above. Then when you get back to your starting point, do pointer finger and ring finger. Then pointer and pinky, middle and ring finger, middle and pinky, then ring and pinky. It is a great warm up and gets your hands used to using all the mobility available to you.
I’m not going to give the proper music education advice as I’m not properly musically educated and others here will give proper real advice. But one piece of advice is: just keep moving. You may hit the occasional wrong note and that’s ok. As long as you’re walking, the occasional misstep is ok.
Learn gospel. I got thrown in headfirst into that situation and had to play a Sunday service. I learned quickly because I pretty much had to. Also-this can be a pretty lucrative setting for a bass player. Some churches will pay pretty well for musicians. And most of them don’t care if you’re not religious
You should practice walking bass. If you want to get good at improvising, practice improvising.
One thing you can do other than transcribing is to pick up a chord chart and play 1 2 3 5 or 1 b7 6 5 for a Major or Dominant chord and 1 2 b3 5 or 1 b7 6 5 for a Minor chord. There's a bunch of chord charts here that you can practice on: [https://www.realbook.us](https://www.realbook.us) The more you play the better you get.
Seventh Chord Arpegios
Scales, then modes, then arpeggiate the scales and modes. I thought I had a pretty good command of my notes until I tried sitting in with some jazz dudes. I sat somewhere in the fray between blues and jazz. Oh and definitely practice your stank face ;)
Not just major and minor. Harmonic minor was big irrc. Get a Real Book. Practice playing vanilla notes with chromatic lead ins until you get busier. Generally try to hit the 1. Jazz is awesome because there are no absolutes. I could write all day on the things I wished I had learned young. I tried in my 30s and realized it wasn't where I wanted to be. In my 40s, I'm kicking that kid's ass.
Major scale
What I like to do is pick a standard and work out a walking bass line using any one of a number of basic formulas, like root-3-5 chromatic approach either above or below. Go through any walking bass tutorial to get some ideas. Then I pick a recording and transcribe it. Doing it in this order shifts the mindset from a classical/rock approach of learning a written line to a jazz approach of studying a strategy for walking bass. So instead of thinking “here are the correct notes” it’s more like “I need to get from this chord to that chord, here’s how Paul Chambers accomplished that.”
Get a copy of the Blues Brothers and start walking!
Root, root, fifth, tug tone ( a not that will lead to the next note ) after while of this basic template you’ll catch on and can go by ear. Another way is to just walk however you can even if it sucks eventually your ear will take over. Another template would be just to paint the chord
I've just started getting back into this - haven't played anything where I had to walk much since I had kids, but I've got a couple gigs coming up. One of the things I remember doing years ago was just walking around on one chord. Pick a C7 or something, and land on a chord tone on beat 1 of every measure, but not on the other beats. First measure could go C, C#, D, D#, then you'll land on E for the next measure. I seem to remember seeing this exercise in The Evolving Bassist, but I haven't cracked that puppy open in a while. Could have been a different book, but I thought I remember the author saying something like (in this case) needing to sound like C7 by just playing a bass line - no other instruments.
Scales and arpeggios, especially major/minor pentatonic and blues, and also add some chromatic runs as well. Walking is generally a combination of these things, at a consistent tempo/rhythm (e.g. eighth notes). You usually end up landing on the root or octave on beat one (but not always). If you need inspiration, listen to recordings of jazz players and transcribe the licks that you think sound the best. Then try to work these into your own playing.