Reddit Reddit reviews Building Walking Bass Lines (Bass Builders)

We found 28 Reddit comments about Building Walking Bass Lines (Bass Builders). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Arts & Photography
Books
Musical Instruments
Guitar Books
Music
Building Walking Bass Lines (Bass Builders)
Walk, don't runA walking bass line is the most common approach to jazz bass playing, but it is also used in rock music, blues, rockabilly, R&B, gospel, Latin, country and many other types of musicThe term "walking" is used to describe the moving feeling that quarter notes create in the bass partThis book familiarizes you with the techniques used to build walking bass linesThrough the use of 90-minutes' worth of recorded rhythm tracks on the accompanying online audio, you will have the opportunity to put your new skills directly into action
Check price on Amazon

28 Reddit comments about Building Walking Bass Lines (Bass Builders):

u/iboughtshoes · 20 pointsr/Bass
u/jetpacksforall · 17 pointsr/Bass

For a starting point, I'd recommend Building Walking Bass Lines by Ed Friedland. You might not be interested in playing the walking style at all, but all of the tools you need to understand and play any type of bass line is right there in that little book.

Other players may have other ways of thinking about it, but to me the whole art of playing bass can be summed up as "different ways to get back home," home being the root note of a song. A great bassline is both surprising (like wow, I didn't see that coming) and yet paradoxically it seems totally right, like it couldn't have been otherwise. You can go up the neck and come back down. You can go down and come up. You can use chords, scales, chromatics, or weird & cool combinations of those. You can use rhythm patterns and "feel". You can throw in dynamic effects like hammer-ons, trills, or even get really exotic and move "off the one" and start substituting chords, etc. etc. This book starts you off dead simple with "how to get back home," and then gradually gets more and more complex. By the end you've got a pretty solid grasp of song structure and you have a set of tools to work within a song structure and build a cool-sounding, effective bass line for it.

As far as gear goes, a good rule of thumb is always "the best, highest quality, coolest-sounding gear you can reasonably afford." Music is all about sounding good, and practice is all about finding ways to enjoy yourself while doing something that can wind up being a drag. Your gear choices should be designed to get you excited about playing and making music, and that's really the only important consideration.

P.S. Edit - Also like several people suggested, finding a good bass teacher can make a huge difference. There are so many little things a book can't teach you, and a video is never going to listen to your playing and point out things you can't hear yet.

u/schumart · 8 pointsr/musictheory

I'd recommend picking up a copy of the book "Building Walking Basslines" https://www.amazon.com/Building-Walking-Bass-Lines-Builders/dp/0793542049

​

This book focusses mostly on blues and rhythm changes but does a great job of demonstrating the main ways of moving from one chord to another. As for chords stretching more than a bar you essentially just want to lead to the root or other chord tones just as you would when changing to another chord.

u/Bracket_The_Bass · 6 pointsr/Bass

Start off by listening to a ton of jazz. Afterwards, learn your major, minor, dorian, and mixolydian scales/modes. Check youtube, there's a ton of good tutorials if you don't know them yet. Then buy a real book and start attempting to follow along with the changes. Start with just the root notes and later add the 3rds and 5ths. Here's a book that I think explains walking basslines pretty well, and another one if you're interested in soloing.



Here's a list of jazz songs most students learn early on:

Afro Blue

All Blues

All Of Me

All The Things You Are

A Night In Tunisia

Au Privave

Autumn Leaves

Beautiful Love

Black Orpheus

Blue Bossa

Blue In Green

Blue Monk

Blues For Alice

Body And Soul

Cherokee

Cotton Tail

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore

A Fine Romance

Footprints

Four

Freddie Freeloader

The Girl From Ipanema

How High The Moon

How Insensitive

Lady Bird

Maiden Voyage

Misty

Mr. P.C.

My Funny Valentine

Oleo

Ornithology

Recorda-me

Red Clay

Satin Doll

So What

Song For My Father

Sugar

Take Five

Take The “A” Train

There Will Never Be Another You

Tune Up

u/Thewes6 · 4 pointsr/Bass

Semi-related, if you're looking to learn/improve your walking basslines, this book is what you want. It really is fantastic.

u/PierreLunaire · 4 pointsr/Bass

The Evolving Bassist

Ray Brown's Bass Method

Building Walking Basslines

Constructing Walking Jazz Bass Lines - This book is part of a series that has 5 or 6 other books on different jazz bass techniques and methods.

u/auntbabe · 3 pointsr/Jazz

My instructor (jazz guitarist and bassist) had me buy a copy of Ed Freidland's "Building Walking Bass Lines". Good place to start learning the basics along with the below suggestion to transcribe bass lines. (hint: get a copy of Audacity, use the bass boost, low pass filter, and slow the whole thing down to really hear the bass). (edited to add link)

u/Forgery · 3 pointsr/Jazz

I found Building Walking Bass Lines helpful when I first started. Another must-have is The Evolving Bassist by Rufus Reid.

u/Dyspeptic_McPlaster · 2 pointsr/Bass

Building Walking Bass Lines by Ed Friedland is a great book for learning to walk.

u/blackb1rd · 2 pointsr/Bass

It's called a dominant[0] resolution and it's one of the most common harmonic techniques you'll find in basslines. Going to the fifth (i.e. the dominant chord) creates instability which wants to be resolved by going back to the root; it's a way of creating tension and release.

You've probably noticed chromatic resolutions coming up a lot as well, i.e. playing a note one-half step either above or below the note you're about to play.

Generally, you want to place the note you're resolving to on a strong beat of the bar (usually the first or the third beat) so try playing around with creating basslines or fills that put a note a fifth above or below the root, or a note one half-step above or below on the 4th beat of the bar or the '4 and' of the bar. You could try this on the 2 or the '2-and' too.

For more information like this check out Ed Friedland's 'Building Walking Bass Lines'. It doesn't sound like a walking line would be appropriate for the music that you're listening to right now but the information in this book absolutely is.

When I'm playing this I'll typically use the same finger to fret the note across two strings and roll the finger across the two notes to play each one. This didn't come naturally to me, I had to work at it a lot. I played major /minor scales in ascending/descending 4ths to practice it [2]. I find that if you can play these with the same finger (rather than one on each string) you can playing some pretty sick sounding fast pentatonic runs.

I'd be happy to clarify any of this if you'd like me to.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_(music)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Building-Walking-Bass-Lines-Builders/dp/0793542049
[2] http://faculty.spokanefalls.edu/InetShare/AutoWebs/dannym/Jazz%20Improv%20II/Exercises/3_Major%20Scales%20in%20Fourths.pdf

u/gmstudio · 2 pointsr/Bass

This book makes the whole thing dead-easy to learn and understand.

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Walking-Bass-Lines-Instruction/dp/0793542049

u/Zebra2 · 2 pointsr/Bass

What you probably want is this. There are very few written bass lines in jazz. It's almost entirely improvisational work. Start by finding resources for walking bass.

u/dexterity_scrapple · 2 pointsr/JazzPiano

Check out Aimee Nolte's series on youtube, "Accompany Yourself", I think she does a great job of explaining the basics and then showing the mechanics of how to fit it into a real song. Another source I've been using is a book called Building Walking Bass Lines. It's written for electric bass players (I started playing bass since my jazz group was all piano), but the concepts in it are very helpful for piano players as well.

u/guerogrande · 2 pointsr/Bass
u/Dr_Poop69 · 2 pointsr/Bass

Real books are great. When you feel comfortable find a jazz jam in town, playing with people will help.

Here’s a book I enjoyed:

Building Walking Bass Lines

You should also get this book:



The Improvisers Bass Method Book

The improvisers bass method book is an industry standard. The beginning may be things you already know, but it does a great job providing you with practice techniques that will actually help translate knowledge to playing. I’d highly recommend both in addition to going through the real book. Outside of that just listen to some jazz. A lot of the key is listening. Go put on some Bill Evans or Miles or Mingus and listen to their bassists

u/blackmarketdolphins · 2 pointsr/Bass

this book is a great starting point. Make sure you're learning notes and not just shapes. The shapes are good to know, but once you forget the notes in them, you're in for a bad time (which is what I'm fixing in my bass/guitar playing right now).

Scales: Major, Nat Minor, Harmonic Minor, and Melodic Minor and their modes. Whole Tone, Diminished (both whole-half and half-whole), and the blues/pentatonics scales (which is where most people start). You really need to know your major scales inside and out, as well as the major, minor, and dominant chord for each note.

Chord Progessions: major and minor 2-5-1, and acknowledging that a dom7 chord function as a V7, a m7 will function as a ii7 before a vi7, and a maj7 functions as a Imaj7 before a IVmaj7. Just get in the habit of thinking in iim7-V7-Imaj7 and ii7b5-V7-Imaj7/im7. A lot of jazz is based on that pattern, often with a bit of modulating. Also learn the rest of the cycle of 4ths, ii-V-I is just the end. Rick Beato has a good video on it, and you can see the normal ii-V pattern and it plus modulation.

Beginner pieces: Autumn Leaves, All the Things You Are, Blue Bossa, Lullaby of Birdland, and Giant Steps (kidding)

u/Beastintheomlet · 1 pointr/musictheory

I can say as a fellow bassist that my big first step into undstanding and using theorywas when I got Real Book and started doing walking bass lines between chords. Walking basslines are really one of the places where understanding chords is really important on bass because we are playing more than just the root or the fifth.

When it comes deeper understanding of harmony and chords, it kills me to say this, it's helpful to know how to play just a little guitar or even better some piano as you can start to connect the sound and movement or chords better by playing them. Bass, while being the supreme instrument, isn't a chordal instrument. We can play chords on bass but it's really not the same as how they sound on chordal instruments.

If you need help on how to get to started on walking bass lines I've heard good things about the Book Building Walking Bass Lines.

u/skipsinclair · 1 pointr/doublebass

“Building Walking Bass Lines (Bass Builders) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0793542049/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Z8qNDbFB7YZWN

There’s a second volume that goes deeper, but this is about the best intro level book I’ve found. Ed Friedland FTW. Great backing tracks, too.

u/el_tophero · 1 pointr/Bass

This has a bunch of easy standard tunes with everything, including the bass, written out:

http://www.shermusic.com/new/1883217156.shtml

Plus it'll give you scales and arpeggios for all the chords for each tune.

Here's a sample:

http://www.shermusic.com/samples/cold-duck-time.pdf

It's great for getting a handle on how Jazz works and also for starting up a combo.

Also, Ed Friedland's excellent book can help you:

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Walking-Bass-Lines-Builders/dp/0793542049

u/anderfin · 1 pointr/WeAreTheMusicMakers

There's a book called "building walking baselines" that opened my eyes on the subject. I forget the author. I'm on mobile so I'll try to find it later and post the details. The basic idea is using chord theory to decide how to approach and leave each main note.

Edit: here's the amazon link:

building walking bass lines

u/maroonblazer · 1 pointr/Bass

Fundamental to jazz bass is being able to play/compose/improvise a walking bass line. Building Walking Bass Lines by Ed Friedland was a huge help to me in learning to compose and play walking bass lines.

u/Kinetic_Static · 1 pointr/musictheory

So to a beginner bassist I would recommend two different study materials.

First buy this DVD, Groove Workshop. It's basically a lecture with exercises on the different components of music as it relates to the bass. One of the largest take-aways is that the notes you play are WAY less important than how you play them. They don't have the clip on youtube, but here is him doing something similar live. On the DVD it's just incredibly well done. He lists all the notes in a G major scale, then only plays the "wrong notes" (notes not in the scale) as Wellington lays down a chordal pattern in G. He then switches to playing in G major and the moment he does this, the G major sounds terrible. When he was playing out of key it was aesthetically pleasing, but when he switches to in key he changes how he's playing and it sounds more discordant.

Second, buy this book on building walking basslines. It's a great introduction to walking bass lines. The point here isn't to remember the notes, but rather the patterns and the feel of "walking".

But for more immediate tips do this. Play the root on the kick, the 5th on the snare, and embellish with the octave and 7th in time with the drummer's fills. You can move up to the 5th by hitting the 4th and down from the 7th with stops along the way at the 6th and the 3rd. If you really want to outline the chords play the root 3rd 5th, but be warned this sounds tired very fast.

The above is just my opinion and is provided merely as a quick outline to start getting the feel of moving around a chord.

u/bucklaughlin57 · 1 pointr/Bass

Yeah, I'm reading his walking basslines book, features jazz blues.

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Walking-Bass-Lines-Builders/dp/0793542049

I'm guessing at these blues jams nobodies gonna call out for a jazz blues.