Walking bass for guitar (1)

I'm going to take a break from the fingerstyle arrangement of "All the things you are" to talk about walking bass on the guitar. I touched on this just a bit in the arrangement and said that I'd do a lesson on it. This lesson also applies to bass players, after all it's thanks to them that we have this technique.

Voy a hacer un parentisis y hablar de como se hace una línea tipo "walking" en la guitarra. En el arreglo de "All the thing you are" vimos un poco una línea de estas pero no se habló en como se construye. Los bajistas también se beneficiarían de esta lección.

First you have to learn how to construct a walking bass line.

I don't know who started to play walking bass on the guitar but I think that Joe Pass raised it to the modern standard that it enjoys today. For guitarrists it's trickier simply because we now have to do two or three things a t once and that limits us quite alot. But that doesn't stop us. Walking is a technique that gives alot of movement to a tune.

No sé quien inventó el "walking" en la guitarra pero sé que Joe Pass lo elevó al nivel de que goza hoy en la guitarra. Para un guitarrista es más difícil por que además de la línes de "walking", tenemos que acompañar y eso nos limita. Pero si logramos superar esta dificultad añadida, el "walking" da mucho movimient a un tema.

There are many definitions for walking bass. The two recurring words in the definitions I've seen have been "chromaticism" and "swing". In other words you arrive at the next note in the bass line by a half step. OK, but I've used chromatics in my bass lines in Bossas and Bossas don't swing. I have also heard the bass line playing the notes of an arpeggio on every beat of a 4/4 or 3/4 swing tune with no chromaticisms and the tune had swing. So, where does that leave us? I've come up with my own definition that I feel satisfies the definition of what a walking bass line is:

Playing on the beat (1, 2, 3, 4 in 4/4 time), bass notes from the scale OR the arpeggio of the chord that's sounding at that moment, with a heavy usage of chromatic approach tones to connect to the next chord.

Una de las muchas definiciones para la línea se "walking" es:

Tocar en los tiempos fuertes (1, 2, 3, 4 en un tema con compás 4/4), las notas del bajo de la escala O del arpegio del acorde que está sonando en ese momento y el uso de cromatismos para conectar la línea al siguiente acorde.

There's alot in that definition but we'll take it apart slowly and you 'll understand it.

Let's start with some basic rules to follow that I have found to work over and over again taking alot of the mystery out of this technique:

Aquí hay unas reglas básicas para seguir que uso una y otra vez:

1-Beat 1 of a new chord starts with the root of the chord.
2-Beat 3 should (95% of the time) be one of these notes IN THIS ORDER: 5th, 3rd, 7th.
3-Beat 4 should be preferably a chromatic approach tone to a new chord or a note a whole tone away from the new chord. If the chord remains the same then use a note from the chord, the scale or a chromatic.
4-Beat 2 is up to you as long as it maintains the smoothness of the walking line.

1-En el 1er tiempo de un compás donde se toca un acorde nuevo ahy que empezar con la tónica del acorde.
2-El 3er tiempo (el 95% de las veces) debería de ser una de las siguientes notas en este orden de elección:5ª, 3ª, 7ª.
3-El 4º tiempo preferiblemente debería ser un cromatismo para entrar en el acorde nuevo por semitono o si no puede ser entonces por tono. Si el acorde no cambia, usa una nota del acorde, de la escala o un cromatismo.
4-El 2º tiempo depnde de ti siempre que no se pierda la uniformidad o suavidad de la línea del "walking".

Let's take a iim7-V7 (two minor 7-five dominant 7) chord progression and first see how a scalar walking bass is constructed:

Vamos a construir una línea "waling" con las notas de la escala en una progresión iim7-V7:


We immediately see that if we choose a scalar approach for this example then on beat 4 we would have to play a G which is the root of the chord in the next bar. So we would have arrived at the G7 too early. That's why we introduce a chromatic note. This concept adds a very smooth bass line moving by half step into the root of the next chord.

Enseguida vemos que si elegimos usar notas de la escala, que en el 4º tiempo tendríamos que tocar un Sol que es la tónica del siguient acorde. Por lotanto habríamos llegado demasiado pronto al acorde de Sol7. Es por eso que se introduce el cromatismo.