Great Free material, a course in chord tones

Kimosabe

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What if I were to tell you that with a half an hour’s practice daily, even 15 minutes, you could learn all the note names of your bass fretboard, including flats, and simultaneously you could learn the fingering for the major triads of all of these fretboard notes? What if I were to tell you that you could play these in time to nice background tracks, at three increasing tempos while developing your stamina for playing complete songs? And all of this within a month and with no strings attached for Free!

What if I were to tell you that within a year or two you could become a decent walking bassist capable of applying your ability to jazz, rock, folk, and country and for Free?

Twilight Zone? I’ve been lucky in life that I’ve had some great teachers and recently I stumbled upon another. There is a lot of bass material on YouTube but I think this is a fantastic one. I’d say the best.

Look up learning Chord Tone Lessons put out by a Polish guy in England, Tomasz, who speaks very good English and who has developed a very great course that teaches in carefully sequenced programmed steps. He provides great background tracks and PDFs, all for free and it’s about a two year course and you see immediate results.

I am a devotee. I “like” every video of his that I watch. I even subscribed to his Patreon channel which amounts to $1 a month. You don’t need to. I did so only because I wanted to give him some support. It feels weird to get such good material for free.

So, long story short, look him up and learn about it. In addition to his course which begins with the Chord Tone Lessons, he has videos on the importance of the root note. To learn the fretboard look for his video on how to practice triads.

Sorry I can’t give his last name off the top of my head. It’s Polish and doesn’t come to me easily. There is more than one person talking about chord tones on YouTube. His is Chord Tone Lessons. Once you find him you can find his other material.

He’s a damn good player in all styles.

You may have seen my comments on Carol Kaye and Mike Kohan’s seconding me that using chord tones rather than scales is the key to playing well on bass.
 
Here’s a link to learning the fretboard while simultaneously learning the triad tones AND learning the blasted cycle of fourths.

https://youtu.be/DsvYHfj1Ooo

Yes, I know you’re used to them cycle of fifths but the cycle of fourths is really what musicians use mostly, the cycle of fifths in reverse.
 
One thing should be noted and that is that having the skill to play walking bass doesn’t mean you have to walk all the time. Sometimes you can just play the root. Sometimes you can do the old one five, one five, sometimes you can just outline the notes of the chords, etc.. But having the knowledge of how to walk allows you to do all of the afore mentioned and more.

How many bassists does it take to change a lightbulb?

One five, one five, one five.

You want to get a little beyond that. I love jazz but I also love country western walking bass. It was Ray Price who brought it into fashion as far as I know. When Willie Nelson started playing bass for him Willie said he had never played bass before and Ray responded that they all knew that the first time they heard him play. Now when Willie plays guitar you hear those nice little bass movements he includes in his playing. He walks a little making his chord changes. It makes it just that much more musical. Charlie Haden, the great jazz bassist, put out a country album. He was raised on country. How about Ray Charles’ great country records? I think Carol Kaye may have played on some.
 
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He is a bit of a task master. He says you have to ask yourself the very serious question as to much much you really want to learn walking bass because it will entail work and much practice.

For example I have mastered a 32 bar progression of Autumn Leaves where I start with the root note of each chord and go to the fifth and then back to the root and then find a chromatic approach above or below the next chord, four beats per measure. R-5-R-a,b. Okay, took a while to learn to play it at increasingly difficult speeds with the beautiful accompanying tracks he provides, tracks that go on for three or so minutes or more. Now he suggests transposing the progression and practicing it in all 12 keys. Not for the faint hearted but he says it will eventually pay off very well.

No rest for the wicked.
 
Mahalos for the info, I'll check it out...
 
Tomasz' free course sign-up and link to his YouTube channel is at https://www.walkingbasslessons.com/walking-bass-lines-course/ - check out the upper right corner if you're on computer rather than mobile. He asks for name and email address and has a big red button "Free Materials". Set up an email rule to manage the mail from him as he's pretty spammy :)

He has some good basics to get started simply. For more extensive Walking Bass I'm enjoying Ed Friedland's book and workshop (via Scott's Bass Lessons). Not free, but I'm getting my money's worth.
 
Thank you, it's cool that you can not just study the material yourself, but to enroll in an educational course. I think it is more practical!
 
I started playing the Ubass last summer. I’ve finally settled on using http://studybass.com as my lesson resource. All the material is free, without ads. Supporting members get some additional resources, but they are by no means required.

The walking bass site is good, but Study Bass meets my needs better. Walking Bass seems to goes deeper faster than than Walking Bass, IMO.

The site was reformatted in 2020, so if you haven’t looked recently it might be worth a look.
 
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