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Now we're going to talk about a walking bass line. We're going to add some extra notes
to make it sound interesting, kind of more of a jazz approach, jazz walking bass line.
So, let's change the key back to the key G. We're going to add some chromatic notes. And
so what I'm going to do, start off with our G. I'm going to move up to A, play a B flat
or A sharp, if you prefer. Go up to B here. I've got to play four notes, because I'm playing
four beats to a measure.
So I've got to play one, two, three, four and then as soon as I land on the C, I'm now
in the C chord. So, as you can tell, that's a little bit more interesting than going [playing
notes] because we're walking up [playing notes].
Now, let me explain what I'm doing there. I'm kind of just improvising, so it's going
to be hard for me to explain. I didn't pre-plan this to know exactly what I'm playing. That's
the beauty of this. Once you get this kind of technique down, you can improvise your
bass line. One way to get used to improvising is to practice how to get from chord to chord.
So, [playing notes] as we did that one to get to C, maybe practice how to get back to
the G chord [playing notes].
So, I'm climbing my way up to C [playing notes], maybe I'll do that to get to a G chord [playing
notes] and I'm playing a G9. So, I'll do that again [playing notes]. C9 [playing notes],
climbing up [playing notes], now I'm climbing back down.
I just felt, "Oh, I'm going to go back down now," so [playing notes]. Back to the C [playing
notes], back to G [playing notes], there's my A minor chord [playing notes]. Same approach
that I did from G, but now I'm doing it from A [playing notes]. I'm going up a tone [playing
notes], a semi-tone [playing notes], another semi-tone, these are chromatic notes to climb
up to the D [playing notes].
Now, that's a really neat, easy way to create a bass line, a walking bass line, by approaching
your chord tone, your root note, from either a fret below or a fret above [playing notes].
Hopefully that will get you started on learning how to do walking bass lines in a finger-style
approach.