You play electric bass, and you want to walk on jazz tunes. Somewhere along the way you might have picked up the idea that jazz bass means upright. People don’t realize that walking has a home on the electric bass. Many of the great jazz recordings, especially of the ’70s and ’80s, had electric bass. It’s not just upright.
Quick answer
Yes, walking has a home on electric bass. Keep it simple: Steve Swallow starts a B-flat blues with just the triad, then changes register. Electric lines also use more open strings, fifths, tritones, walk-ups and even repeated notes, which sound great on electric. And leave space, like Stanley Banks on So What.
Jazz transcriptions, this time on electric bass: that’s something that would have gotten me kicked out of Juilliard. But look at who played it. Sonny Rollins could have had any upright bass player he wanted, and when Bob Cranshaw played with him in the ’70s and ’80s, he played electric. Paul Motian, the great drummer in the Bill Evans Trio, led bands in the ’90s and 2000s that played swing with an electric bass player. And Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie, John Scofield and Allan Holdsworth all used electric bass players in their bands.
So let’s go through three lines you can take with you to any jam session: Steve Swallow, Bob Cranshaw and Stanley Banks.
Can you walk jazz bass lines on electric?
The first line is from a great record, I Can See Your House From Here, with John Scofield and Pat Metheny, two of the great guitar players of all time. That’s Steve Swallow on electric bass. It’s a really great B-flat blues line, very simple, but it has some twists and turns that only an experienced jazz musician would do.
That’s one great thing about electric walking: you can play really simple and it’ll sound great. If you play that way on upright, it might sound too pedestrian. Play it on electric and it actually sounds like you’re playing blues electric bass, like you’re bringing some blues and some rock into the jazz you’re playing.
Here’s how I think about it. On upright you’re supposed to be academic and advanced, because it’s a European instrument, so you’re taking that European harmony and bringing it into American music. Electric bass is a uniquely American instrument. So when you play simply on electric, it sounds more at home. It sounds more idiomatic to the instrument. You’ll hear a lot of electric bass players, even Jaco Pastorius, play really simple walking bass lines, and they sound even better on electric than they would on upright.
How Steve Swallow walks a B-flat blues
Swallow starts really simply. The first two bars are straight down the middle: just the triad, and then he walks right back up. It doesn’t get any simpler or any clearer than that.
Then he does something I love: he changes the register. It’s really simple, but it makes all the difference. If he stayed down low (on upright we call it half position), it might sound a little monotonous. So vary your register, not just your color and your note choices. I break down that idea in the Ray Brown walking bass line formula.
Then he gets into more chromaticism to create some forward motion, and he plays a similar motif in bars seven and eight. I’d argue this sounds even better on electric than on upright. On upright, staying down low too much can get muddy. On electric, it sounds really clear, because the notes speak more.
Bob Cranshaw and the electric language
The second line is Bob Cranshaw playing behind Sonny Rollins in 1973. Rollins had made Saxophone Colossus and played with Bud Powell, and here he was with electric bass, right around the time Miles was doing his electric thing and Weather Report was very popular.
Cranshaw plays differently on electric than he does on upright. The instrument’s different, but the lines are actually different too. On electric you’ll hear more open strings, simpler lines, more passing tones, more tritones and more fifths, because they just sound really good on electric. A lot of the electric language is walk-ups.
Then there are repeated notes. I’m always telling my upright students not to repeat notes, because they don’t sound good on upright. Somehow, on electric, they sound great, and every one of these lines has them. You can repeat notes without frustrating the groove. Why do the tritones sound so good on electric? Who knows? I’m not a scientist. I’m here to tell you what sounds good, and I’ve studied with great masters like Ron Carter, who told me what sounds good.
That line is so funky because Cranshaw uses language that’s specific to the electric bass: the repeated notes, the tritones, the fifths. You can’t play it on electric without swinging.
My hope is that electric bass will one day have its own language within jazz bass lines.
Cole Davis
The language already exists. It’s just not really codified in any specific way.
Stanley Banks on So What: space is jazz too
The third line isn’t walking at all. It’s “So What,” that classic D minor vamp, from a George Benson live video, with the great Stanley Banks on electric bass. Just because it isn’t walking doesn’t mean it isn’t jazz. It’s George Benson playing a Miles Davis tune with the same funk and the same swing as a classic jazz recording. It’s just not four on the floor. If you want the upright side of that tune, I cover Paul Chambers’s line in the So What bass line.
Banks plays a really simple bass line, but it’s actually tough to play. He uses a lot of space, opening up the line in a way we don’t when we walk, and he plays some eighth notes in there. He leaves a whole bar open. Sometimes he lets the note ring, and sometimes he cuts it off.
It’s tempting to play a lot of notes on electric, especially when you’re coming from upright. When I get on the electric, I think, wow, I can play all these eighth notes and all this fast stuff. But sometimes leaving space, which a lot of electric bass players don’t do, is the best way to go. As bass players we always say that if it doesn’t feel good to you, it’s not going to feel good to someone else. The name of the game is holding down a groove in a way that feels good to you. Banks’s line can repeat and repeat and still sound great.
Try this today on electric
- Walk a B-flat blues the Swallow way. Two bars straight down the middle on the triad, then walk right back up.
- Change the register. After a few bars down low, move the line up the neck.
- Use the electric moves. Work in a fifth, a tritone and a repeated note, the way Cranshaw does, plus an open string and a walk-up.
- Vamp on D minor with space. Leave a whole bar open, and choose which notes ring and which ones you cut off.
- Check the feel. If it doesn’t feel good to you, it won’t feel good to anyone else.
If you want a step-by-step way to walk on electric, The 7-Day Walking Bass Breakthrough (Electric) is a seven-day method for walking through ii-V-Is, stepwise progressions and static modal chords. Once you’ve got some walking down, try soloing on electric bass next.
Put on a B-flat blues tonight and play it simpler than you think you should. On electric, it’ll sound great.
Go deeper
The 7-Day Walking Bass Breakthrough (Electric)
A seven-day method for electric bassists who want to walk through any jazz tune: ii-V-Is, stepwise progressions and static modal chords, with lines that move and swing.
FAQ
Can you play jazz walking bass on electric bass?
Yes. Walking has a home on the electric bass. Many great jazz recordings of the ’70s and ’80s had electric bass. Bob Cranshaw played electric with Sonny Rollins, Paul Motian led bands that played swing with an electric bass player, and guitarists like Pat Metheny and John Scofield used electric bass players.
Is it OK to repeat notes in a walking bass line on electric?
On electric, yes. I’m always telling my upright students not to repeat notes, because they don’t sound good on upright. Somehow on electric they sound great, and you can repeat notes without frustrating the groove. Every one of the electric lines in this lesson has them.
Does walking bass sound different on electric than on upright?
It does. A simple line that might sound too pedestrian on upright sounds like blues electric bass on electric. Staying down low can get muddy on upright, but on electric it sounds really clear, because the notes speak more. Even Jaco Pastorius played really simple walking lines.
Who plays electric bass on I Can See Your House From Here?
Steve Swallow, on the John Scofield and Pat Metheny record. The line I break down from it is a B-flat blues, very simple, with some twists and turns only an experienced jazz musician would do. He starts with two bars of just the triad, walks back up, and then changes the register.
Should I play more notes on electric because it’s easier?
It’s tempting, especially when you’re coming from upright. But sometimes leaving space, which a lot of electric bass players don’t do, is the best way to go. Stanley Banks leaves a whole bar open on So What, and his line can repeat and repeat and still sound great.
