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Jazz Blues with Walking Bass Line: Adding Bass

Advanced Chords Jazz
Mike Salow 210 lessons

Now that we've got the chords down it's time to add our bass line.

In this part of the tutorial we will cover some rules to adding a bass line while comping chords.

There are two main rules to follow.

Rule #1: All bass notes should be quarter notes on a down beat. (beats 1 - 2 - 3 - 4)

Rule #2: Each chord should be approached by half step, even if that note is outside of the key/scale. That mean beat 4 of your bass line should always be a half step away from the next chord.

When it comes to creating our bass line we have a lot of different options.

Here are a few. (Keep in mind; this only includes beats 1, 2, & 3 since beat 4 will be a half step approach)

#1 - play up or down the scale until you reach the next chord (1 - 2 - 3 - half step approach note)

#2 - play the arpeggio of the current chord until you reach the next chord. (1 - 3 - 5 - half step approach note)

#3 - 1 - 5 - 1 - half step approach note

#4 - 1 - half step down - 1 - half step approach 

There are a few more but these are the ones we will be utilizing in this tutorial.

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