This chord progression is very similar to a popular jazz standard, Autumn Leaves, completely by accident of course.

I learned to walk the bass by doing two things. Firstly, I learnt some set tunes (by a guy called Barry Gailbraith I think) that my college teacher gave me, and then I went about transcribing some actual walking bass, from both bass players and guitarists like Joe Pass and Martin Taylor. Transcribing the parts is a very important part of the learning process and you should make sure that you don't skip that part. The classic Miles Davis Album "Kind Of Blue" has some great walking parts on them and there are some tunes that follow a blues pattern too - which is a good way to get into it (you should know your 12 Bar Blues harmonies by now).

The Trick

The "trick" to doing the chords and walking bass together is to learn some set II-V licks and the accompanying chords (which you will do by learning this tune!). You will find that there are many common chord progressions in jazz and once you have learnt some you will be able to adapt them to fit many different situations.

The Chords

Start by checking the chords shown below and try playing through the tune using just the chords, maybe playing 4 to a bar. You won't be able to walk a bass unless you can play all the chords easily first! The only slight strange chord is that sometimes I play the first chord (Am7) using only the first finger barre - that allows you to hold the chord longer while you play the bass with other fingers.

Listen up

Next have a listen to the walking bass mp3 below a few times and get the sound into your head so you know what you should be sounding like.

Learning the peice

There is no fingering on the chart so you will have to work it out. Try to use your logic to figure them out, the one thing you might not think of is using the same finger to walk the bass to a new chord (like in bar 25 use the 2nd finger to walk up from the F#-7b5 to the B7). Experiment and find the right fingering for yourself. If you get really stuck, leave a message for me in the forum. Lastly there is no ending - you will have to work one out for yourself. It is written so that it can be cycled over and over.

Hope you enjoy it.

Video Lesson (coming soon)

 

HELP!!!!

If you need to ask a question about this lesson - there is a topic set up specifically to help you with this lesson. To help you find it easily you can click the following link and it will take you right the topic. You'll be able to see questions that other people had and ask your own questions! Hopefully one of the very helpful members of our community will be there to help you soon, I do go there and answer stuff too - but there are just too many questions for me to answer alone! So click this link to get help with this lesson!