New to walking, looking for help

[Funky Dunky]

Hi, I'm looking to explore walking basslines on bass guitar and wondered if anyone could share some good online resources on the subject. So far I've learned some of the more clichéd lines and have taken to inventing some lines of my own with more of an unpredictable bent to them. Any pointers would be appreciated, especially tips on turnarounds.

Thanks

Edited November 28, 2016 by Funky Dunky

[louisthebass]

Scott Devine has done a couple of seminars recently on walking basslines - you can get a 15 day free trial on SBL if you want to check those out. Todd Johnson has a fair few seminars on there on the same subject.

Ed Friedland's "Building Walking Basslines" and "Expanding Walking Basslines" books are great too. Todd Johnson has a lot of jazz bass output from his online presence as well.

Bilbo is one of Basschat's resident jazzers, and maybe might see this thread?

[Bilbo]

Listen to a shitload of Paul Chambers, Ray Brown and Milt Hinton. Then practice for the rest of your life

Seriously, though. Work with quarter notes as much as you can, especially in the early days. The drops and kicks are great but you need to nail the time first.

[paul_5]

+1 for the Ed Friedland books.

[TKenrick]

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1480368170' post='3183843']
Listen to a shitload of Paul Chambers, Ray Brown and Milt Hinton. Then practice for the rest of your life
[/quote]

This.

Transcription, although much more strenuous than getting lines and concepts from books, is much more beneficial. As well as giving you insight into what the masters of walking bass played on various tunes it teaches you the [i]feel[/i] of walking bass, which is a vital ingredient that you can't get from the page.

Part of the problem is the bass is difficult to hear accurately on many recordings - it might be worth searching for records that don't have drums on (there's a great duo album by Jim Hall and Ron Carter called 'Alone Together' which is worth a listen). Another option is to seek out the Jamey Aebersold Jazz books that had decent players on the recordings (such as Ron Carter) as these allow you to isolate the bass part.

Also... if you're not comfortable with chord tones then the whole process will be much more difficult.

Good luck!

[paul_c2]

If you have 1 minute, listen to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruTfC5v9Z2Y

If you have an hour or more, then Scott Devine has a bunch of stuff on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=scott+devine+walking+bass

[paul_5]

[quote name='paul_c2' timestamp='1480443414' post='3184480']
If you have 1 minute, listen to this:

[url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruTfC5v9Z2Y"]https://www.youtube....h?v=ruTfC5v9Z2Y[/url]

[/quote]

Brilliant!!!

[jrixn1]

[quote name='Funky Dunky' timestamp='1480359503' post='3183711']
I've learned some of the more clichéd lines and have taken to inventing some lines of my own with more of an unpredictable bent to them.
[/quote]

Perhaps you'll like this: Jaco with Joni Mitchell, Brecker, and Don Alias.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvBjj32pIyM

[The Jaywalker]

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Edited November 28, 2017 by The Jaywalker

[tinyd]

One other thing that I found helpful once I had some basic walking knowledge was to play over as many different tunes as possible - moving smoothly between chords is a big part of walking so doing this over unfamiliar chord sequences really forces you to think about what works, and why.

[basstorius]

Funky Dunky if you're at all partial to bluegrass or country music, you could visit YouTube and play along with selected songs using half-note, two-to-the-bar walking lines, as a bridge towards later four-to-the-bar proficiency and an alternative to the usual oompah approach. There's also Buck Owens; I recall a couple of his early LPs - the only ones I ever heard - had tunes with nifty quarter-note walking lines.