Basic Walking Bass

Walking Bass lines are used in rock, blues, jazz, gospel and many other genres.

I would like to share the basic idea of building walking bass lines using chord tones.

Let's try playing a 4 chords progression in the key of G.

The chords are - Am7|D7 |Gmaj7| Cmaj7|.

We need to identify the notes in these chords.

Am7 - A C E G
D7 - D F# A C
Gmaj7 - G B D F#
Cmaj7 - C E G B

Now, each note is a quarter note (1/4).
The timing is like this - 1234|1234|1234|1234 (one note each).
The basic idea is always to play the root notes on the "1".
You can try different arrangement of the notes,
the exercise below is an example of what you can play.

e.g. ACEC|DCAF#|GBDG|CBDG

Get a guitarist to play along with you and experiment which notes sound better.

More complicated walking bass lines can be formed using modes,passing notes and need not start with the root note.

Have fun.