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Playing Jazz Bass: Why You Should Learn Jazz and How It Applies to All Bass Players

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Firstly I’d like to thanks Mike for asking me to contribute to this great blog.

I’ve decided to do a few jazz lessons as I’m a strong believer that learning some jazz benefits your playing in most styles of music. It’s one of those genres of music that demands that you really know which notes are in which chords, which scales work over chords and where the notes are on the bass.

To start with, we are going to look at a jazz blues progression in the key of F. Creating a walking bass line from scratch can be a daunting prospect so we will build it up gradually. The first PDF goes through the sequence using root notes only. This allows you to hear how the sequence moves and to lay down a steady foundation to build upon.

The second PDF includes the 5ths of each chord. Although the 5th doesn’t tell us much about the sound of the chord, it creates even more stability to the line before we create more colour with 3rds, 7ths and passing notes. Practice playing these lines and creating your own over different sequences and next time we’ll inject a lot more variety in to our solid bass lines.

playing jazz bass john marley blues in f root notes example 1

Download the example file here: blues-in-f-root-notes-2

playing jazz bass john marley blues in f root notes example 2

Download the example sheet here: blues-in-f-root-and-fifth-2

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