Why Jazz Bassists are Better than You

Jazz bassists tend to be some of the best musicians out there they've got killer time harmonic flexibility they're great soloists and they've got a pretty much encyclopedic knowledge of all of the standards they make the rest of us look pretty amateurish in comparison so how are they always so good and what can we do to get closer to their level the answer to both is actually surprisingly simple walking bass lines they're 95 of what Jazz bassists play in practice and they actually end up working on pretty much everything you need to improve as a musician I guarantee that whatever instrument you play practicing walking bass lines will drastically improve your playing in their most basic form walking bass lines are relatively simple just playing crotchets or quarter notes on every single beat to really outline the Harmony and by sticking to such a rigid rhythmic framework it's gonna force you to really work on your time put on a metronome at a slowish sort of speed and just try playing a note on every single beat it's really going to reveal if you're slowing down or speeding up and after practicing that regularly for a few days or weeks your time feel is going to be so much better [Music] but bassists are also able to make it swing it's just crotchets and yet it still swings and this is all down to the sound and the accents they use and normally we think of swing just meaning that the Quavers or the eighth notes are uneven rather than splitting that beat in half we split it up long and then short but to be honest swing is way more about the accents and the way we play those notes if you start accenting the notes in your walking bass line it's gonna swing so much harder straight away and then we can take that concept and apply it to other areas of our playing [Music] and one of the most important things when we're improvising which is often underappreciated by beginner and intermediate musicians is harmonic Clarity our solos are gonna sound so good if what we're playing outlines the harmony of the tune and playing walking bass lines really forces you to think about this just play chord tones on every single beat and try and connect them smoothly and you're gonna end up forcing the sound of the harmony into your head and then when it comes to soloing you're naturally gonna have so much more harmonic Clarity in your life [Music] ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha [Music] ha ha ha [Music] hmm [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] but also one of the most common problems people face is getting lost in the form halfway through a solo you might have played A Chorus or two and it's sounding really good and then suddenly you can't remember where you are we've all been there but bassists keep walking chorus after chorus and they never seem to get lost and to be honest it's largely a focus thing I mean when was the last time you practiced going round and round the form for 15 choruses but when you're working on a walking bass line and you're going around and around the form for that long well once the harmony is quite comfortable and it's no longer a challenge it can start to get a little bit dull and this is where the harmonic flexibility comes in you see you never want your practice to make you bored if it does you either need to take a break or you're practicing the wrong things and after chorus 7 that 251 in B flat might be sounding a little bit stale so to spice it up and keep yourself engaged you might throw in a tritone substitution or make it a really quick 3625 or any other harmonic device you've got at your disposal and walking bass lines are great for this because we can always fall back on chord tones which will make the idea super clear sound really hip and in time it will improve our harmonic flexibility [Music] and because with walking bass lines you end up spending so long just working through the harmony of a tune not only will our time our swing our harmonic Clarity and flexibility improve the whole form is going to stick in your head for so much longer so it'll be quicker to learn tunes and add more into your repertoire and for a few ideas on harmonic devices that you can work into these bass lines and other aspects of your playing check out this video next

Channel: Josh Wakeham

Views: 3,548

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Id: -OzBlu9vo5E

Length: 6min 30sec (390 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 13 2023