Walking Bass Lines

In this lesson, you will learn how to combine chords with a walking bass line over a 12-bar jazz blues in F. The goal is to make the guitar function as both the harmony and the bass. This approach lets you keep the groove moving and outline the chord changes clearly.

A walking bass line moves through a chord progression, one note per beat. It outlines the chords of the progression and moves smoothly from one chord to another, while keeping the groove alive.

Walking bass in a band is usually played by the bass guitar or double bass player, but being able to play walking bass lines is an essential skill for jazz guitarists when playing without a bass player.

Walking bass on guitar is usually played fingerstyle. Use your thumb for the bass notes and your other fingers to comp the chords. The challenge is keeping that bass line going while comping the chords.

Being able to walk a bass line and comp the chords at the same time is an invaluable skill to have and one that will allow you to work in situations where other guitarists cannot.

 

 

Video – Jazz Blues Walking Bass

Drum Backing Track

Listen & Play-Along

 

 

Step 1: Playing the Roots

The very start in learning how to walk a bass line is being able to play the root note of each chord on the lowest two strings (A and E strings) of the guitar.

In most walking lines, the root note is usually the first note of every bar.

Below, the roots for the entire blues progression are written out on the lowest two strings. Play them slowly and make sure you can find each one without hesitation before adding anything on top.

 

 

Step 2: Half Time

Next, we move on to what is called half time, where the half note is the rhythmic focus of the line.

You do this by adding a second note on beat 3 of each bar for a duration of two beats.

This note can either be:

• A chord tone – the 3rd, 5th, or 7th of the chord. The safest and strongest choice because these tones outline the harmony clearly.
• An approach note (AN) – A chromatic note that leads into the next chord by either a half-step (one fret) above or below the root of the next chord. For example, if the next chord is an F7 chord, the two chromatic approach notes of the target note (F) would be E (below) or Gb (above). Using chromatic approaches immediately adds that classic jazz voice-leading sound.
• A diatonic note (DN) – A scale note that isn’t a chord tone. Less strong than chord tones, but great for variety.

 

 

Notice the rhythmic change in the last two bars. Because each bar has two chords, we switch to quarter notes for the approach tones.

This leads us nicely into step 3: walking time, where everything locks into a steady quarter-note pulse.

Step 3: Walking the Bass

In this step, we extend the quarter-note pulse to the rest of the blues progression. This is where the line actually “walks”.

Two things to keep in mind when adding the extra notes:

1. The note right before a new chord is usually an approach note, played as a quarter note.
2. We can use any note from the diatonic scale or arpeggio to fill in the remaining quarter notes.

 

 

 

Step 4: The Chords

Now that you can build a walking bass line, it’s time to add chord voicings.

Shell chords are the go-to choice of voicing for walking bass lines, but drop 2 and drop 3 chords are used as well.

Here are the easy-to-grab chord voicings we’ll use:

 

 

Step 5: Combining Walking and Comping

Now that the bass line and the chords are under your fingers, it’s time to put them together.

A common approach is to place the chord stab on:

• the “and” of beat 1 (as in bars 1 and 2)
• on beat 1 (bar 3)
• on the “and” of beat 3 (bar 4)

These placements sit naturally on top of a walking line and keep the groove clear without getting in the way of the bass movement.

Once you’re comfortable, feel free to move the chord hit anywhere in the bar. The important thing is that the bass keeps walking.

 

 

Step 6: Adding Chord Substitutions

Now that the bass line and chords are solid, we can add a few substitutions to give the progression more color and variation.

 

Chord Substitution 1 (Bar 5)

Instead of sitting on Bb7 (or Bb7 → B°7), we run a descending dominant line:

Bb7 → Ab7 → G7 → C7

• Ab7 acts as the tritone substitution of D7 (the V of G7).
• G7 → C7 forms a II-V back to F7. Normally, this would be Gm7 – C7, but in a blues, you can make every chord into a dominant-type chord.

 

Chord Substitution 2 (Bar 10)

C7 is delayed with a C9sus4.

Adding a sus chord before a dominant chord is an effective way to create more movement in your chord voicings.

 

Chord Substitution 3 (Bar 15)

Here, I play a Gb7 after the F7.

Gb7 is the tritone substitute of C7 and is another way to create movement in the chord progression.

 

Chord Substitution 4 (Bar 23)

The descending line of 13th chords comes from stacking tritone subs through the turnaround:

• Ab7 is the tritone sub of D7.
• Gm7 becomes G7 (you can turn any chord in a blues into a dominant chord).
• Gb7 is the tritone sub of C7.

 

 

Walking Bass Line Patterns

Here is a set of walking bass patterns grouped by chord type (major, minor, dominant, and half-diminished).

Learn these shapes, get them under your fingers, and they’ll make it much easier to improvise walking lines over jazz standards.

 

 

Now we can take these steps and apply them to any jazz tune, be it a blues tune or a standard 32-bar tune such as Autumn Leaves.

At first, write the steps out so the process is clear. Once it feels natural, start walking and comping on the fly.