Originally published July 22, 2014, lightly edited for clarity.
When I compose a jazz walking bass line, I start with triads: the root on beat one of each chord, then thirds and fifths filling the remaining beats. As I have said in past blogs, the note job of a bass line in any style is to outline the chord sound using one note at a time. The best set of notes to use for this job are the notes of the triad. In getting started with jazz walking bass lines for the 1st time, beginning with triads works very well and will give you immediate results. Basically you put a root note on the first beat of each new chord and then fill the remaining beats of that chord with different combinations of the thirds and fifths. By starting your journey with jazz walking bass lines with triads you will establish a strong harmonic foundation so that when you start to add other walking techniques to your bass lines, they will always sound good. I would like to send a strong thank you to my teacher Kevin Bales for getting me into these triads. Walking bass is one of the styles I teach. For one-on-one help composing walking bass lines, online bass lessons via Zoom are available.
