Walking Bass Lines by JC Magsalin

WALKING BASS LINES by JC Magsalin

Before we start, I’d like to limit this short discussion to the following:

* 4-4 time signature
* diatonic scale modes
* basic chord progression and turnarounds (ii-V-I)

As a bassplayer, our role when playing walking basslines is to outline the harmony in such a way that people will hear the chord changes even when there’s no comping instrument playing (i.e. piano, guitar). We also have to think about how to lead one chord to the next seamlessly and drive the music forward.

To begin, let’s first have a working idea of strong beats and weak beats in a 4-4 time signature. If you listen to a basic drum pattern, the bass drum is on beats 1 and 3 while the snare drum is on beats 2 and 4.

Beats 1 and 3 are your strong beats and beats 2 and 4 are your weak beats.
Now that we know where strong and weak beats lie on a 4-4 time signature, it will be easy for us to outline the harmony of a chord progression. (please check out my previous thread on CHORD CONSTRUCTION before moving on  )

In order to outline the harmony of a series of chord progressions, simply play chord tones on strong beats and any other note on the weak beats chord tones on the strong beat will outline the harmony while the other notes on the weak beats will help connect one chord tone to the next. that’s about as simple as i can describe it 
let’s put it in an example 

In Fig.1, I used chord tones on strong beats AND weak beats. The numbers below the notes indicate what chord tone I used in relation to the chord. Notice that the notes are not really connected to each other in terms of movement. They seem to jump from one note to the next (for measure 1, beats 1 and 2 are a perfect 4th apart. beats 3 and 4 are a minor 3rd apart). This isn’t totally bad because this is commonly heard in blues tunes. But, if our goal is to make the transition from chord to chord smoother, we have to make the intervals from one note to the other much smaller.

Now, take a look at Fig.2. Visually, the notes are more connected in a sense that the largest interval from one note to the next is just a major 3rd. This was achieved by using any other note in the scale on a weak beat that would lead into the next chord tone on the strong beat.
Take note though, we still used a chord tone on a weak beat (Fig.2, measure 2, beat 4) in order to move to the next chord tone smoothly. We can still make it so that we will exclusively have chord tones on strong beats and any note on the weak beat.

Check out Fig.3. Measure 1 and 2 have chord tones on beats 4 while measure 3 has chord tones on all beats. At this point, we can opt to move out of the diatonic scale and use chromatic notes to lead into chord tones.

In Fig. 4, all strong beats on all measures have chord tones. all weak beats on all measures have notes that lead to the next chord tone either by a whole step or a half step. Using chromatic notes is a very effective way to lead to another note because they tend to resolve to the nearest semi-tone above or below.

Hope this very short discussion helps get everyone started out. Feel free to add anything here or ask anything about this topic.