Bass Lesson 22 - Playing Over Chords

Bass lines can often be mistaken into being completely complicated and way out of the league of a player. It will seam complicated at first but if you can sit down and look over this information slowly and accurately you will be able to get a grasp on how to walk a bass line.

A basic walking bassline is a series of notes that is played up and down, sometimes around, a scale or arpeggio pattern to make a more interesting bass line. It's something a little more flashy than following the root of the chords around. You may want to review over the chord progressions article before getting to deep into this article. The best way to understand this is to figure out a chord progression and  how the chords work and then play the scales and patterns accordingly.

Here we have a A and B progression. And over the top of that there is a cluster of chords that will be played by the guitar. Instead of following the simple A to B progression over and over a bass player could play this line above. Notice the chord progression is marked out over the top of the music. The A6/b means that the guitar player will play an A6 chord but with a B in the bass instead of the usual A. The bass line above still follows the chord progression, meaning it plays the root note whenever the note changes, but at the same time it is walking around the scale. This is what you want to strive for. To perfect this technique you do this. Since the progression is in Amaj we can assume that almost any note in the Amaj scale will do. But when we switch to the B we can play more efficiently by playing modally, or in modes. Let me explain this a little better with the next picture. 

In measure 1 the first 2 beats (first 4 eighth notes) are in Amaj, but beast 3 and 4 are in B Dorian. Dorian is the second mode. This means that you would play the Amaj scale but from the notes B to B. Or from the second note of the Amaj scale to the 9th note of the scale. Since the progression moves to B in the second half of measure one, it make us able to play the B above the A at the upper end of the scale, or the upbeat of beat 3 (6th note). To break this down, you would play the Amaj scale during the first half of each measure and then play Amaj the second half, but only from the 2nd note (B) to the 9th note (B). Take this into note and follow the example, notice how it follows this rule. And for more tips you can check out the video or the GLI forums, Thanks!