Jazz - Walking Bass
Jazz bass lines are commonly based on the swing rhythm. These bass lines move in a smooth linear motion which is usually referred as walking bass style playing.
Generally to create a walking bass line all four quarter notes in a bar of * time are played by the bass. A walking bass line moves mainly in an ascending and/or descending fashion. There are various ways to create a walking bass line:
A. using chord notes only
B. using chord notes and scale tones
C. combining chord notes and scale tone notes with chromatic notes
As already mentioned earlier a chord is made up from different intervals, e.g., 1 (root note), 3 (third), 5 (fifth) and additional intervals like 7 (seventh) etc..
To play chord notes means to use only the notes which are already included in the chord. Within an octave there is a series of 8 notes (tones and semitones) which form the scale etc.. Each of these notes can be numbered, e.g., the root note is the first note, the 5th is fifth note of the major scale etc.. Therefore chord notes are part of a scale. E.g., the notes of the Cmaj7 (C E G B) are the root note, third, fifth and seventh note of the C major scale.
To use scale tone notes in a walking bass line means to add extra notes from the scale to the chord notes. Chromatic notes, also referred as passing notes or leading notes are not part of the chord or scale but lead into a root note or another chord note:
E.g., the Db note is neither part of the Cmaj7 chord nor C major scale but leads chromatically into the C root note.
Example 112 incorporates the different concepts of walking bass playing just described. The whole line is based over a single C7 chord. All the notes that appear in the line are listed here: E.g., chord notes (C), scale tone notes (D), chromatic notes (F# )
