Somebody calls So What. You’ve got eight bars of D minor 7, then eight more, then the bridge moves up a half step to E-flat minor and sits there for eight before it drops back to D. That’s a lot of one chord. “How do you play modal jazz where you have so many bars of one chord?” is a question I get a lot.
And before you walk a single bar, there’s the bass melody itself. So What opens Kind of Blue (Miles Davis, 1959), Paul Chambers states that line on bass, and the horns answer him. It’s a bass line you absolutely need to know. So let’s take both halves: how to finger the melody, and what Chambers does when he walks over all that D minor.
Three ways to finger the So What bass line in D
There are a lot of ways to play this line. In the intro to my lesson I use several different fingerings back to back, and each one sounds a little different.
The first is the classic Simandl fingering. If you listen closely to the record, you can hear Paul Chambers using it. Play it faster and it starts to sound like the original. Part of what you’re hearing is Chambers himself: he was famous for not articulating every note. On a lot of recordings of this tune he isn’t articulating this phrase. He’s going with slurs and pull-offs.
I usually articulate every note, so I’d play it a little differently. I’m not at Juilliard anymore, and I can do whatever I want now, so I don’t have to play like Paul Chambers.
The second fingering is similar, with less shifting. Start on the D, take the A on the D string, then slide up to the B.
The third is my favorite, because I love third finger. Everything sits right under the hand.
You can hear how the different versions represent different styles of playing. Some of us want to sound more like the ’50s and ’60s, and if that’s you, pick the fingering that gets you that sound. I prefer the third one because it’s closer to how I play: I articulate every note and I’m not really using a bebop articulation. There’s no right or wrong way. It’s all about personal preference.
The E-flat section, with no open string
So What isn’t only in D minor, even though that’s most of it. It also goes to E-flat minor, and now you don’t have the open string to lean on. You’ve got three choices again.
The first way is the way Paul Chambers played it. Speed it up and it really sounds like the Kind of Blue version. If that’s the sound you’re after, this is the one.
The second keeps you in the same register even without the open string. Start on the E-flat on the A string, then shift to your third finger, and it’s all right there. Some people don’t like playing there, and I don’t blame them. If you’re coming from electric bass, you might actually find this one easier.
The third crosses three strings. It’s probably the easiest, because there’s less movement than with the other two. I can play it faster than either of them. God help me if someone ever calls So What at that tempo. The catch is that it’s the most efficient but not the most accurate. If you want to sound like Kind of Blue, go with the first one. It’s all about what you like.
Walking over D minor: create a V chord that isn’t there
Now the walking line. The most important thing is understanding that you’re playing modal jazz. It’s called modal jazz, not chordal jazz. (I don’t know if chordal jazz is a term, but you get the idea.) You’re playing in a mode more than you’re playing a set of changes, and that’s exactly what Paul Chambers is doing behind the solos on So What.
Here’s what keeps his line from getting boring. In the first bar he walks down. In the second bar he plays an imaginary V. Look at a chord sheet for So What and there’s no A7 anywhere. It doesn’t matter. He needs to play a bass line that’s interesting or else he’ll lose the gig, and creating that V gives the line movement.
By the fourth bar he takes it further and plays an imaginary ii-V-I to get from bar 4 to bar 5. Play E minor 7 flat 5 to A7 under what he’s doing and it sounds like a ii-V-I to me. So by bar 5 he’s already created all this motion in the first four bars. That’s what you’re feeling when these rhythm sections sound like they’re running. It feels like a sprinter: the alarm goes off and they’re running.
Then bar 6. He starts it on a C-sharp, right on the downbeat. That’s insane. There’s no C-sharp in D minor 7, and the tune is mostly Dorian, but the C-sharp implies an A7, so it works perfectly. He does this throughout the line, landing that C-sharp on beat one, beat two, beat three and beat four at different points. You’d never hear it and think, “Why did he play that note?” It makes the bass line sound better.
He finishes the line the same way, with another ii-V-I: E minor 7 flat 5 to A7 to D minor 7.
The bridge: play E-flat Dorian, not E-flat minor 7
This part totally blew my mind. On the bridge, Chambers doesn’t play one root on beat one. He isn’t asking how to play a clear E-flat minor 7 in each bar. He’s asking how to play in E-flat Dorian, and the whole bridge comes straight out of that mode. That’s why you don’t hear many roots on the downbeat.
You don’t have to play the roots on beat one. If the pianist or guitarist looks at you funny, then that’s on them because they don’t understand modal jazz.
Cole Davis
Chances are they know what chord it is, and they’ll give you the freedom to play what you want. Check out John Coltrane’s Impressions, which is built on this same chord progression. Jimmy Garrison plays a G on the D minor 7, and nobody’s vibing him. It works great. A lot of the time these players aren’t even playing the changes that are written. They’re playing the modes.
Try this today
Take what Chambers does and run it over your own play-along. Go slow enough to hear every choice.
- Bar 1, walk down. Start in D Dorian and walk down through the mode.
- Bar 2, create the V. Imply an A7, even though it’s nowhere on the chart.
- Bar 4, make a ii-V-I. Outline E minor 7 flat 5 to A7 so the line lands on D minor 7 in bar 5.
- Bar 6, start on C-sharp. Put it on the downbeat and hear the A7 it implies.
- The bridge, skip the root. Walk eight bars of E-flat Dorian without landing on E-flat on beat one.
Don’t just play root, root, root, or 1, 3, 5, 7, 3, 5, 7, 1. Mess around with the mode, have some fun, and create some imaginary Vs and imaginary ii-V-Is. If you want to sketch a line on paper first, try the free walking bass line builder. If walking any line at all still feels shaky, start with Walking Basslines From the Beginning.
Chambers’s full line is in the So What lesson from the Walking Like a Legend Transcription Bundle. Learn his line, then go make up a V chord that isn’t there.
