Walking Bass & Bluesy Tunes
This course covers walking bass, blues and gospel inspired jazz standards. We introduce the major blues scale to add soulful licks to your arrangements.
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Summary Information:
One-time purchase - learn at your own pace, with unlimited access to this course.
- Difficulty: Intermediate
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- Theory Lessons
- Performances & Arrangements
- 32 PDF Files & Lesson Supplements
Walking Bass & Bluesy Tunes
This course covers walking bass, blues and gospel inspired jazz standards. We introduce the major blues scale to add soulful licks to your arrangements.
This course features blues and gospel-inspired jazz standards and tutorials
We start with “Georgia On My Mind” and a study on the 3 variations of the blues scale: the minor blues, major blues and extended blues scale. We explore how these scales are used over different chord types and apply them to each jazz standard lesson in the course.
“Summertime” is broken down into a 3-part series. We introduce a simple walking bass which outlines the root and 5th of the chord. This is a nice way to get started with walking bass lines and is also very effective device when playing solo piano.
We then have a study of walking bass line patterns and apply the concepts to the tune “Autumn Leaves”.
Finally we explore the use of the minor blues and minor pentatonic scales over the tune “Cry Me A River”.
iRealPro Backing Tracks
When practicing walking bass lines, or any medium to up tempo tune, you should play with the metronome on beats 2 & 4. This has a couple of benefits.
In jazz music, the strong beats are on beats 2 & 4, whereas in classical music the strong beats are beats 1 & 3. Playing with the metronome on 2 & 4 will improve your sense of time and also develop a stronger sense of swing.
In jazz bands, you will hear that the drummer hits the hi-hat on beats 2 and 4. If you practice with the metronome on beats 2 and 4, you will become very calibrated with this which will help you stay in time when you are playing in an ensemble setting.
Try to play as quietly as possible so that the metronome or iRealPro is louder than your playing. This will help you become calibrated with the metronome and your ability to feel the time, not just count it.
Using the tune "Georgia" - we will also explore the concept of the major blues scale and how to apply this to major 251 progressions.
In this tutorial we create a solo arrangement for "Georgia On My Mind" applying the major blues scale with some soulful licks and riffs.
We will start with left hand voicings to get a good grip of the melody and chord changes. We’ll then add in some bigger voicings and passing chords.
A nice place to start out with walking bass lines is to create lines using just the root and 5th with either chromatic or whole step approach tones.
In this section of the tutorial we are going to explore how you should be developing your swing feel and also your ability to improvise in general.
We discuss some important principles for creating a simple walking bass line and then apply the principles in the context of 251 progressions.
We’re now going to take the study a step further by adding scales into the walking bass lines and enhance the rhythm and swing feel of our lines.
In this lesson we will apply the theory from the walking bass lessons and also introduce rhythmic comping and other stylistic elements of walking bass.
In this lesson we will explore a simple way to approach the tune "Autumn Leaves" with a walking bass outlining just the root and 5th of the chord.
Most often played as a ballad, this is a great tune to incorporate bluesy licks and riffs. It’s written in the key of Eb Major and has an AABA form.
We start this lesson by applying a stride style in the left hand with some bluesy licks and riffs in the right hand.
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Walking Bass Lines Lesson Supplment File Type: pdf
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