Walking Bass Line – Softly As In A Morning Sunrise
In this masterclass we’re going create a walking bass line over the song Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, by Sigmund Romberg.
Walking bass lines are a fascinating and important part of jazz as they create the foundation for the harmony underneath the chords and melody. They can easily change the colour of any chord by, for example, playing the 3rd in the bass instead of the root.
Walking bass lines are a great tool for piano players and other instrumentalists. You can use this or any other bass line for playing solo piano, learning different songs with a similar harmonic structure, and for practicing solos. Softly As In A Morning Sunrise is a great song to learn to play bass lines over, as its sections are harmonically very similar to hundreds of other songs.
I would recommend that you listen to the great bass players and compose your own walking bass lines over songs you’re working on. Bass players who I would highly recommend to check out are Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Sam Jones, Percy Heath and Jimmy Garrison. The bass line we’re going to create in this lesson is a combination of several bass lines I have transcribed from the bass players mentioned above.
Lesson Downloads
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Walking Bass Line – Softly As In A Morning Sunrise File Type: pdf
Related Lessons
In this lesson, Tuomo shows us 3 common reharmonisations of a 251 progression that we can play in our jazz standard arrangements.
We discuss some important principles for creating a simple walking bass line and then apply the principles in the context of 251 progressions.
Tritone Substitution is a useful reharmonisation technique that can be used to add harmonic interest and variety to a chord progression.
Practice Tips
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The subtle reharmonisations covered in this lesson provide a lot of flexibility but also take some time to become accustomed to. Try taking each reharmonisation one by one and apply it in as many places in the tune as you can find.
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Tuomo covers many of the key principles of creating a walking bass line. Take note of these and see if you can improvise a bass line through Softly As In A Morning Sunrise
- Similarly, using the principles explained by Tuomo, try creating bass lines for other tunes you know.
Hello Tuomo: I was looking for ways to play Softly and the search of the PG led me to this fantastic lesson. I do not have a question (as yet, maybe later) but simply wanted to thank you for this lesson. I did not think I would like using the walking bass line approach but this lesson endeared me to it. I also just love the way you actually voice your chords, another benefit of the lesson. Of course, I immediately moved to the related lessons that Hayden posted on this approach to benefit from all of them. Best, Smole