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.
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
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