Advanced Guitar Player

OK here's the simplest of simple walking basslines for our Basic Jazz Blues in Bb - it can't really be called Jazz yet but everybody has to start somewhere!

The arrangement follows the arppeggios for the chord changes and has a comping chord on the offbeat triplet of on the first beat of each bar. The effect you get isn't too far away from the shuffle rhythm of something like B.B. King's version of Everyday I have The Blues - as it's really a practice introduction to comping and walking basslines, this seems to make a lot of sense to me.

The main difference between this and a standard blues shuffle really is that the bassline doesn't always go round the chords in the same direction starting on the root note.

As this is an introductory exercise, I have started the lines on the root but I've introduced some variation, so that whilst the bass goes up the Bb7 chord conventially, it comes down on Eb9 and F9.

Once you've learnt a few inversions (in later lessons), you'll soon find more possibilities for changes in direction and less obvious notes.

I've already completed a bassline with chord inversions and a set of changes using chromatic chords for the Basic Jazz Blues in Bb so hopefully I'll have enough material to make a couple of videos soon.