Walking Basses

Exploring the Walking Bass Line

So yeah, let's look at another kind of bass line: the walking bass line. Let's explore it in as many different ways as we can.

The Basics

A walking bass line outlines the chord. For example, a 12-bar blues might go like this:

• Very simply, just outlining a C6
• Maybe to the 7
• Then the F
• Back to the C7
• Then to the G
• Maybe the F

It could stay on the G as well, but then there's a little turn around there. So there's a very simple walking bass line outlining the 12-bar blues.

Adding Excitement

What these early boogie players realized is that they could make it more exciting and intense by adding:

• An octave, which adds a bit of weight instantly.
• Breaking it up to create a skipping element, making it much more danceable.

So, you might get something like this. I might have even gone a little too harmonically advanced there with the little 2-5-1, then a different way down to the G, which you can do. The idea is that it's rocking between the octaves.

Exploring Variations

There are some things, like perhaps the Kaukau blues, where it's almost a sort of half-time feel. Feel free to explore different ways of playing it:

• Instead of going up and then down, why not start going down?
• Rather than going all the way up the chords, you might want to just go up, up, and down the triad.

You might do something like this, still based on the sixth chord.

Albert Ammons' Approach

Let's look at what Albert Ammons does sometimes with that walking bass line. He often adds the fifth, which again adds an extra layer of weight.

• So there you go.
• Then on the F.
• When he gets to the G or on Bass Gone Crazy, for example, he simply plays.

"Do check out that tune. It's great. And it's in the key of G as well."

If we put that in context, you can hear the difference going from the walking bass line without the fifth to the bass line with the fifth. It adds this extra weight, which I think is really hip.

Syncopation

Another thing that Albert Ammons does with that walking bass line with the fifth in it is to displace it by an eighth note or a quaver.

Rather than the bottom note being on the downbeat, that becomes the downbeat. For example:

• Instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, you get something like 1, 2, a 1, 2, 3, etc.

This may sound slightly disjointed when you're familiar with the normal walking bass line, but when you put it in context, it works.

"It adds an extra kind of syncopation to it."

So something like this:

• 1, 2, 1, 2

adds a little bit of spice!