[Plays Walking Bass Line With Chords: ii V IV I on guitar]
Jack here jbf music and guitar lessons, in this quick guitar tricks we’re looking at
6 rules that teach you how to play a basic walking bass line with chords.
Rule #1: choose your chord progression. I’m going with a ii V I IV in G major: A min 7,
D Dom 7, G maj 7, C maj 7. Rule #2 your thumb will play single notes on the beat; 1,2,3,4;
Fingers plucking a chord on 1+ as well as 3+. I’m playing it swung here.; you could
do it straight if you wanted to . The root note should always be on the 1st beat, the
3rd and 2nd beat can change, but we’ll come to that a bit little later. As a bonus rule,
try to let the 1st chord ring, then staccato the 2nd chord. To recap those let’s take
the chord progression and apply this fingering style
[S1] This is going to be a fairly condensed lesson, so it might be worthwhile pausing
the video to try stuff out, having said that, if that feels alright, lets move on to the
next set of rules.
Rule #3 chromatic approach: try coming at the chord from a semi tone below, or above.
First off let’s just stick to from above on the 4th beat of the bar. Then below Now
I’m going to mix them up a bit. We can also play a chromatic approach on the 2nd beat
of the bar
Already it’s starting to sound a bit like the real thing; if you play a chromatic approach
on the 2nd beat, you probably want the one on the 4th beat to be approaching from the
other side. So rather than both being above or below
switch them so if you do semi tone above on beat 2, play a semi tone below on beat 4 and
vice versa.
Which leads us nicely into rule #4 vary the moves as much as you can. A great way to think
of it is like a butterfly in flight; it’s got a clear goal in mind, but will take an
unpredictable path to get there. So what other paths can we take? Ok rule #5 try going up
the scale. I’m also going to approach from a semitone above on the 4th beat, then use
the first 3 notes of the scale. I’m using this shape over A min, this over D, and the
same shape, just move for G and C. You can obviously re-finger this, but I’d suggest
this as a starting point for a bit of consistency. Ok, Rule # 6 slide whole chord; or just the
fingers. Sliding down a semi tone then back up generally sounds best. [play just sliding
the chords]. And if I approach from a semi tone above then, do the chord slides .
I quite often just pick the notes with my fingers for the slide; I find the root a bit
overpowering otherwise; but more or a personal preference than anything else.
And to recap all of those rules: 1. Pick a chord progression
2. Thumb on the main beats of the bar, fingers on 1+ and also 3+
3. Chromatic approach; come at it from semi tone above or below
4. Vary the moves, so it’s more jazzy and less riffy; unless you want a riffy sound,
I suppose 5. Ascend the scale
6. Slide the chord
It’s unlikely that you’ll get full improvisation freedom overnight, if you’re new to this,
but one thing you can do that helps is plot out some tables to follow:
So only a chromatic approach on the 4th beat of the bar; a great place to start.
Chromatic approaches on the 2nd and 4th beat of the bar.
Chromatic approaches, chord slides and scale; I’ve also put the chord progression in this
last one. The numbers being the beat of the bar, and the key can tell you what every abbreviation
means. A digital table like this one is easy to edit, so you can mix it up and practice
all sorts of different combinations until you can happy freely switch between them on
the fly.
Cool, so that’s a quick overview on how to write and improvise walking bass lines!
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