Notes From A Bass Guru (Vol.13, Aug.10, #3)

A Chordal Walking Drill

As you know now from my last two articles, walking bass lines are played either with scalar or chordal tones. In my last article, you were given several common chord patterns. What I am going to give you in this article is a very fun and challenging walking drill to help you memorize those chords in a fun way while at the same time, working on your walking and improvisation of correct notes.

This drill works much like the drill from the article on ‘Walking Basslines”. You are given the chord progression, as it is written above every measure, and you are to improvise in notes from the chord it is asking you for, again in essence you will be playing arpeggios. Play a quarter note per beat. Now for this drill, a root note of A is written in on the first beat of every measure. I want you to play all the chords being asked for in A first, to show you the variety and difference of the different chord patterns. Then later, you can play them with any root you want, as long as each chord uses the same root, thus the point of the drill. So you will play A major, A minor, A dominant 7th, and so on.

If you happen to know any other types of chords, go ahead and throw it in! Again, in one note per beat (quarter notes, it is in 4/4 after all), play a tone from the chord you are on and move to the next as smoothly as possible. The tempo can be anything you want it to be. Keep practicing this daily for a while and your technical playing will drastically improve and you will know all of these kinds of chords effortlessly!

You will gain a lot from this!,
Mark McAnaney, Solo Bassist

"Notes From A Bass Guru (Vol.12, Aug.10, #2)"

Some Common Chord Patterns

Pictured below are some common chord patterns you should definitely know. There are many more kinds of chords than this, but these are the most common kinds. The diagrams are written in just one root, but you can use these patterns with any root note you want, the chord will be correct.

Notice in the major chord diagram, there are two notes with arrows pointing at them together, one note (the octave) is not colored all the way it, it is a different option. You can play either note or both and you will still be playing variations of major chords.

Minor:




Dominant 7th:



Dominant 9th:




Inverse Major, another option to playing a major chord:



11th:



13th:




You are strongly encouraged to learn and practice all of these until you know at least these chords inside and out. As I said before, they are all common. You can use these to write chord progressions and chord based walking basslines. See my article on walking basslines to see how this is done, and use these given chords to write your own walking lines! Also, you will need these to work on a very good drill I am going to give you in my next article.

Study these hard!,
Mark McAnaney, Solo Bassist