People always wonder what kind of bass lines they should actually play. They know the notes. They know one, three, five, seven and some wrong notes. And an F blues played entirely below the G string can sound pretty good right up until about chorus five. That’s when I start getting bored, and chances are you do too.
I’ve broken down a lot of walking lines on this blog, from Ray Brown and Israel Crosby to Paul Chambers, Peter Washington and Charlie Haden. This page pulls the main ideas into one place and points you to the post that goes deeper on each.
Quick answer: To walk a bass line, play the changes with good notes: one, three, five and seven, with some wrong notes and half steps sprinkled in. Keep it moving forward, and keep it varied. Mix chromatic and intervallic bars, move above and below the open G, and never play four bars of the same thing.
What notes do you play in a walking bass line?
Start with good notes: one, three, five and seven, with some wrong notes and half steps sprinkled in. What people really want to know is what kind of line to build out of them, and my answer is that there are only two: chromatic and intervallic.
Chromatic is a half step or a whole step. Intervallic is anything greater. What you want to get used to isn’t so much the notes themselves as the way each one feels.
Then there’s beat one. When you’re playing a blues, play a beat one that belongs to the new chord. If I’m playing over the E-flat 7 in a B-flat blues, I don’t want a B-flat on beat one, because then people will think it’s a B-flat 7. Paul Chambers does exactly this on the E-flat 7 in “Freddie Freeloader,” and I break it down in what Paul Chambers plays on Freddie Freeloader.
And keep it moving. Chambers’s line always moves forward, which is the most important thing with any bass line. When students ask me what to do about how their lines sound, the answer is always to use chromaticism, because chromaticism is the thing that makes the bass line move forward.
How do you make a walking bass line not sound boring?
Play an F blues entirely below the G string and it sounds fine until about chorus five. You’re playing jazz language, in time, with clear lines. What’s missing is variety. I spent a few months dissecting Ray Brown’s lines, and the first thing I noticed is that he never does four of the same.
The formula sorts every bar two ways: chromatic or intervallic, and below the open G or above it. That gives you four units, and the rule is never four bars of the same unit. I used to force myself to follow it on gigs. If I’d just played three bars of chromatic below, the next bar had to be intervallic or go above the G string. The full breakdown is in the Ray Brown walking bass line formula.
Register matters because of the way people talk. If someone talks in the same register the whole time, you start to tune out. There’s a misconception that if you stay low and do your job, you’ll keep getting hired. People want variety.
When we play Giant Steps, we often play something that isn’t interesting, because the changes are so hard that we’re afraid to play anything interesting. Most bass lines on it sound like root, root, root, root. In the first bar, Peter Washington plays the third, then a fifth. Do third, fifth, third, fifth instead of the usual third, third, third, third, and it’s interesting. I walk through his line in how Peter Washington walks Giant Steps.
The truth is you can be as interesting as you want, and one way to be interesting is to play a variety of different things.
Cole Davis
What do you play when one chord lasts for bars?
When I talk to other bass players in New York, they often say the hardest thing about playing standards is two bars of the same chord. You play a lick in the first bar, and then you’re thinking, wait, do I play the same lick again?
Israel Crosby has a clever answer on “You or No One.” He plays something ambiguous, not something obvious. It’s in the chord, but it’s not 100% clear what chord it is, and it sets up a cadence, so the second bar has a ton of weight. He also changes the order of notes. Where you’d normally start a chorus with a very common lick, on “But Not for Me” he goes one, six. And he puts the cadence on beat four, ending on the root of the next bar before that bar happens, so the next bar is fresh. You don’t always have to create cadence on beat one. I get into all of it in Israel Crosby’s bass lines and his beat four cadence.
“How do you play modal jazz where you have so many bars of one chord?” is a question I get a lot. On So What, Paul Chambers keeps those long stretches of D minor moving by creating chords that aren’t on the chart: an imaginary V in bar 2, an imaginary ii-V-I into bar 5, and a C-sharp on the downbeat of bar 6 that implies an A7. On the bridge he plays E-flat Dorian, not E-flat minor 7, so you don’t hear many roots on beat one. It’s all in the So What bass line and how Chambers walks it.
A lot of the time, the great modal players aren’t even playing the changes that are written. They’re just playing the modes. On John Coltrane’s “Impressions,” which is based on the same chord progression, Jimmy Garrison plays a G on the D minor 7, and it works great. If you want to hear Garrison in a whole different setting, I break down his open intro on “Resolution” in Jimmy Garrison’s A Love Supreme bass intro. It’s all fourths.
How did Ray Brown, Paul Chambers and Israel Crosby walk?
Ray Brown gets called a meat and potatoes bass player. That’s so far from who he was. He was a poet on the bass. His lines follow the form perfectly, to the extent that they become the form. He plays in two-bar phrases, and every two bars has a cadence. The line on “Have You Met Miss Jones” is built from distinct two-bar phrases organized by different cadences, and by repeating himself at certain points, he creates a composition within the bass line.
Paul Chambers played mostly chromatically. Israel Crosby chose to play mostly intervallically. Both work because they’re changing the register. They phrase differently, too. Chambers was more flowy, more stream of consciousness. Crosby was very organized and very melodic, with distinct, clear two-bar phrases.
On “Freddie Freeloader,” Chambers plays mostly eighth notes and triplets in the first four bars of a B-flat blues. If I played that on a gig, I’d get fired. When PC plays it, it feels natural, and it’s always moving forward. Paul Chambers is a master of making everything sound beautiful.
Then there’s Charlie Haden, my favorite jazz bass player of all time. I tell my students not to repeat notes, and on “Nothing Personal” he repeats notes, I think, 14 bars in a row. The feel is just outstanding. Every time I listen to him, I’m inspired to play simpler, clearer, more intentional bass lines. More in Charlie Haden’s bass lines and how to get his sound.
Does a walking bass line have to keep perfect time?
Everyone says the most important role of the bass player and the drummer is to keep the time. Put Ray Brown’s “Have You Met Miss Jones” from We Get Requests into a tempo tracker and the number changes every beat: 76 to 81 to 74. And yet it swings. The classic recording of “Giant Steps” jumps from 132 to 152 in two bars.
I’m not saying you should drastically speed up or slow down on a gig. What I’m saying is don’t worry about it. Your bread and butter as a bass player is making everything feel good.
A metronome will help you get in the ballpark. That’s its function. But the way you work on feel is by playing along to records, way more than playing with a metronome. Both tempo maps are in Ray Brown on Have You Met Miss Jones: time vs feel.
How do you walk a fast bass line on upright?
Look at your right hand. If I’m walking a fast bass line and I start on the first finger, it’s impossible. If I start on the second finger, it’s so much easier.
When I get stuck in faster situations, I say to myself, okay, what finger am I starting on? Most of the time it’s the first finger, so I switch. On a fast F blues, start every bar on the second finger, and even if you do a little skip, end up back on it. That’s in Billie’s Bounce on bass.
Speed actually comes from the right hand, not the left, and especially for eighth notes, it comes from alternating. My drills are in three right hand drills for upright bass speed.
Where to start
- Still choosing notes bar by bar. Read the Freddie Freeloader post for the beat one habit, then try the thirds and fifths drill in the Giant Steps post.
- You can walk a blues, but it gets boring. Start with the Ray Brown formula and write out a blues with it.
- Long chords and standards trip you up. Go to Israel Crosby, then So What.
- The notes are right, but it doesn’t feel good. Read time vs feel on Miss Jones, then Charlie Haden.
- You want lines straight off the records. Try my process in how to transcribe bass by ear.
Go deeper
Walking Basslines on Upright Bass: From the Beginning
A 5-lesson upright method built on the 1-3-5-7, the walking approach Ron Carter taught Cole at Juilliard.
FAQ
What’s the difference between a chromatic and an intervallic walking line?
Chromatic motion is a half step or a whole step. Intervallic is anything greater. In an intervallic line, the intervals give the line its character and its shape. In a chromatic line, the chromaticism does that job. You can play mostly one or the other, the way Paul Chambers and Israel Crosby did, as long as you change the register.
Is it OK to repeat notes in a walking bass line?
I tell my students not to repeat notes in their bass lines. Then Charlie Haden repeats notes for bars at a time on “Nothing Personal,” and it sounds perfect. He isn’t really playing the changes there. He’s playing a feeling, almost a deep, low feeling, with that incredible sound. On that line, it almost doesn’t matter what the notes are.
Do you have to play the root on beat one?
Not always. On the bridge of So What, Paul Chambers plays E-flat Dorian instead of a clear E-flat minor 7 in each bar, so you don’t hear many roots on beat one. On Giant Steps, try the third or the fifth on beat one. On a blues, though, make sure your beat one tells the band the chord changed.
Should I practice walking bass lines with a metronome?
Use it, but don’t stop there. A metronome will help you get in the ballpark, and it’s a good way to learn something like five over four. The way you work on feel is by playing along to records, way more than playing with a metronome. Put on Ray Brown’s “Have You Met Miss Jones” and walk with him.
Is walking easier than a two-feel?
Believe it or not, yes. When you’re walking, you don’t have to be responsible for any rests. You keep track of the form with the notes you’re playing. In a two-feel, you’re responsible for the rests as well as the notes. Soloing is a combination of the two, and the way to start soloing is to subtract from your bass line. I cover it in how to solo on upright bass.
If the basic notes of a walking line still feel shaky, start with Walking Basslines From the Beginning. If you’d like help with the notes, try the free walking bass line builder.
Then write out a bass line on an F blues where you never play four bars of the same unit. I promise you it’ll be, by default, a great bass line.
