Hi, Geoff Chalmers here from discoverdoublebass.com.
That is the home of online double bass lessons.
If you would like more like this one, please go and check out the website after this video.
Today I am going to be talking you through some of the most common problems that I see
with walking bass lines.
I have taught a lot of students over the years, and these issues have come up time and time
again.
So I'm going to move through them quickly and hopefully there will be something in there
that that might help you with your plight.
Let's get into that now.
Well, one of the most common problems that I see is not connecting the notes and particularly
the last note of the bar.
So if you are playing four notes per bar, it tends to be the last one, to give you an
example.
So what tends to happen is you are thinking about the next chord, and there is a bit of
a gap between these four and then the beat starts the next bar, so you want the notes
to be really well connected and not like this, hang on, so not hesitating at the end of the
bar, and it's because you are generally preoccupied with what's coming next.
So learning the chord progression by memory will really help that.
You can, of course, keep the notes shorter.
You could play... and stylistically that was correct.
But the main thing that you want to be able to do is to control the notes so you make
that choice.
And generally, I would say try and connect them and particularly make sure that you are
not falling down on the last beat of each bar.
Now the next problem that I see is that you will have maybe learned the chord progression,
but you are not making sense by playing lines that work melodically.
So if you play a line, it's really a phrase, it's really nice to hear that repeated throughout
the progression so... and now move on to another one.
You can see that I am not repeating it consistently.
I am not banging you on the head with that.
I am not playing... because it just becomes too much.
But what I am doing is I am introducing a phrase and then developing it and then playing
a slightly different version of it.
Basically, when you hear a phrase, your ear wants to hear that develop and it's our job
to play with that kind of expectation in an interesting way.
So yeah, try and make sure that your phrases work melodically and they are not just kind
of abstract notes moving through the chord progression.
The next one is a really quick one.
I am sure you have heard it before.
Make sure you are outlining the harmony of the piece you play, and that means to be thinking
predominantly about arpeggios that underly everything that you do.
I mean of course you can use scales, chromatic notes, surround notes, leading notes, whatever,
but you have to have a really good understanding.
If you are a guitar player, so understanding of the harmony, if you were a guitar player
you would have to know what the notes of the chords were for you to play them.
Same on the piano, the same with the bass.
The arpeggio, the chord tone, is the chord that is being played, but we do it one note
at a time.
So make sure that you can master that first.
If I just quickly play something, just using arpeggios, and that was just moving through
the first eight bars of Autumn Leaves, but have you note there was an arpeggio, I think,
pretty sure it was.
And even when I was playing fills, so for instance, that's Am7b5 to D double at 7, up
to the Gm, it sounds interesting because I am not playing them the same way each time.
I am kind of moving around the finger board.
But it is key that you are able to outline the harmony.
You should be able to hear the tune go by and so should the other musicians in the band
that you are improvising with.
The next one is one that I am sure that you have heard a lot, and that is playing the
arpeggios or the scale or whatever you are working on always or predominantly ascending
and not using the descending version as much.
It's great in some music, for instance rock and roll.
It kind of works because you are having these repeated phrases.
But what you should be able to do when you are playing walking bass lines is move down
as easily as you can move up, so really smoothing out the lines and mixing it up, now back up
again.
So yeah, really work on those descending lines
and your bass lines will sound a lot more creative than they will do if you play everything
ascending.
It's really common so make sure you are not doing that.
The next problem is that I sometimes hear people accenting beats two and four rather
than feeling the pulse on two and four.
So what you want to be feeling is a one, two, three, four, a one, two, three, four.
So set your metronome on beats two and four.
But wait till you listen to what I am playing.
I am not accenting that note.
That's actually quite even.
It would sound like this if I did it.
Hang on.
You get so caught up in thinking about where two and four is in the bar that you end up
accenting it.
It is a really strange line that you end up with.
So you want to be tapping your foot on two and four.
You want to be feeling the pulse on two and four.
But you don't want to actually be accenting it as a matter of course in your bass lines.
I really hope you have enjoyed today's video.
If you have, click on that like button and let me know.
And if you'd like a step by step method of creating bass lines that takes you right from
the start to advance level playing, you can check out my course on creating walking bass
lines.
I will provide the link below this video.
Keep practicing hard and I will see you in the next lesson.