Walking bass is a great way to explore the neck, on the other hand, it is also a great way to explore what notes are available in position under the fingers – it turns out to be quite a few!
It is also a challenge to stay in one position and to still be inventive. We talk you through how to do just that in this bass tuition video.
From the blues to the jazz blues
If the standard 12 bar blues is three chords and the truth, the 12 bar jazz blues keeps the same 12 bar skeleton but packs a lot more harmony into it – several bars carry two chords each, and the changes start pulling at one another. The engine behind that pull is the secondary dominant: before you run away screaming, all it means is that one chord wants to lead to the next, like a line of dominoes. A V chord is temporarily borrowed to point at the chord that's coming, a trick the theory books call tonicization.
Along the way Pete digs into the sound that gives the blues its bite: the dominant 7th chord, its parent Mixolydian scale (the good old rock'n'roll scale), and the crunchy tritone between the major 3rd and flat 7th – the interval medieval theorists called diabolus in musica, the devil in music. Jazz and blues simply refuse to resolve it, and that's half the fun.
Why practise "on the spot"?
Staying in one position forces you to really see what's under your fingers: scale tones, arpeggios and chromatic approach notes all within a hand's reach, no heroic shifts required. Pete also demonstrates the relaxed Simandl fingering borrowed from double bass – a tone between first and fourth finger, shifting rather than stretching – which keeps the left hand comfortable for long walking passages.
New to walking? Start with Walking Bass Lines the Easy Way, then come back for the jazz changes. And if you'd like a guide through a real chart, book a one-to-one lesson – walking bass is the heart of Pete's own gigging life.