Hey there welcome to day 28 of my 30 days of guitar coaching.
I think it might be getting a little crazy.
Well doesn't matter. I'm committed to completing all 30 days.
Today we're going to talk about bass note walks that's
bass notes between one chord and another. I've had a lot of students ask about
this. We'll start with a simple one between
two chords just to get you going and then I'll add some really cool ones
to give you a little more to work on. Let's do this.
Hey there I'm Tomas from Real Guitar Success those bass notes between chords
we call bass walks can be a lot of fun and it makes your
music sound cool. There's a few different types of bass
walks and we won't get into all of it right now. We'll start with something
fairly simple and then build on it into something that sounds good.
Feel free to take as much of this lesson that works for you right now
and you can always come back and watch it again and keep adding on.
Let's head over to my guitar chair so we can really get into this.
Let's start off by doing a simple strum that we're going to build on.
So we'll start with the G chord and I'll just go
down, down, up, down, up, down. I'll hit the bass note to start off.
I like that so you don't have to do this exact strum. This is
what I'll use. You can go down, down, up, down, down, down, down, up, down.
Leave some space. Good way to practice.
Yeah I like that okay so we got the strum going.
Now we're going to add a bass note to the C chord. Okay, we're going to go up
on the fifth string to the C chord. So I'm gonna hit the open fifth string
second fret and then land on the C chord.
Here's what we got so far - G going to C
sounds like a typical bass walk up.
Okay a little slow. Let's try it G and again you can simplify the strum.
It's two measures each strum. Open, second finger, C chord. Again G
over groovin now.
Okay
so that's one type of walk-up. It's a scale-wise motion. We're going up the
scale note by note that's an open ABC.
Another type of walk up is where you go hit a note - go up
and then back so we could do that with the D
chord. Let's try that. The open D that's the fourth string
second fret and then open
okay. Let's try that slower. Try that with me the D.
Open D second fret and then hit the D chord.
Again, open second fret.
Let's try it from the G chord now together. Strum that G chord with me.
There's two measures there. Here we go.
Let's do it one more time. Nice and slow, G chord now
bass now
okay. Now maybe you're thinking about timing. Where
does those bass notes go? What I'm doing is I'm playing two
measures. This is one measure 4 beats 4 and then I'm playing the next
measure and on the third beat I start the bass run. So here's the
second measure 1 2 and then on beat 3, I hit a bass note, on
beat 4 I hit a bass note and on the next beat it's beat one of
the D chord.
So try that with me now G 1 2
so that's the timing on every one of these base runs. It's
the middle of the measure on the third beat and the fourth beat and I hit on
the next one beat the next chord so let's add
those three chords together. Yeah it's turning into something. Here we
go. All three chords. We'll go nice and slow.Let's just go straight
down strum first 1 2 3 4 1 2
on 3 on the open D 3 4 D chord. Good.
4 1 2 go into C 3 4 1
2 3 4 1 2 3 okay let's stop there and do
it again G 1 2 ready hit it
3 4 1 2 4 and 1 2 3
4.
You see. I went 1 2 3 4 1 2 3
4 1 and on the 1 is where we hit that C
chord. Okay let's do it again. I'm going to play the strum. Feel free to just
strum straight down if that's kind of where you're at. You
can always start upping the strumming. Here we go together 1 2
ready hit it.
Go to C and back to G.
No base run there yet but we need something huh. Let's do it again
1 2 3 4 1 2 1 2
3 4 1 2
3
4. We need something between the C and the
G there. I think we need one more chord and why don't we do a little different
type of bass run? So we've covered the scale walk up and
we've covered the one where it kind of goes up and then
back down. Let's do one that skips some notes.
This is we're going to play the E minor chord so
we want to go
bass notes at low E. So we're going to hit the fifth string
second fret and low E. Try that with me right now.
Open fifth string second fret and then strum the E chord when we hit
the low E. Okay again open fifth second fret.
Good. We've got another chord. This is going to sound good now. We're going to
go from G to D to the E minor and then to the C. We'll do the
same walk up so let's try it. Here we go. Okay let's do
this straight down strums nice and slow just to kind of map it out.
Here we go
3 4 1 2 to D going to E minor. We'll start with the
fifth string, the second fret and low bass note.
Sounding good 3 4 up to C, right? We knew that one.
4 1 2 and then it goes back to G. Let's start over.
I want a base run one more just to cover going back to that G.
We didn't do a chromatic bass note yet. Chromatic means where you just go up by
half steps. Let's try this.
Yeah, I like it - C
Yeah I gotta go a little faster to get all those notes in there. So try this
with me - open first fret, second fret and third
fret.
That'll be the rhythm... I like it. Start with me. Ready
go G again now
yeah do it again now
again last time.
We got some variety in there now okay. Let's put it all together.
We've got the G. We're gonna go to the D
then to the E minor.
To the C, walk it up scale wise and now we got the chromatic.
Oh boy, let's do it okay. Let's do one with a straight down strum
and then we'll add some pizzazz to it. Straight down G
1 2 ready hit it. Straight down. Look at this strum if you want 1 2
3
one D minor. Now up to C this time 1 2
up.
Now let's try the chromatic going back to G 4
one more time B
E minor
some strumming
do
little faster
so
good work. Thanks for joining me for this
session. I hope you learned something. Come on
back tomorrow and we'll do day 29 two more days we got this on the home
stretch. Bye for now.