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Walking Bass Lines Within a Mode

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Part of the video series: Jazz & Latin Bass Guitar Grooves

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Summary: Walk bass lines within a mode on bass guitar; learn how from a professional bass guitar player and teacher in this free music instruction video.

Views: 533 | Tags: bass, guitar, scales, theory, jazz, folk, guitarlessons, guitars, bass guitar, music theory

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About the Expert

Ryan Larson Ryan Larson is a young jazz composer whose teaching technique focuses on the basics of music theory in all twelve keys. When applying his twelve-key technique... read more

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Video Transcript

Walking Bass Lines Within a Mode

Okay, so we've looked at playing the blues, and walking chord changes, but there's also another type of jazz, modal jazz, where we basically be walking only in modes. So, there are certain modes that are very popular for this, especially the Dorian mode. The Dorian mode has a really good jazz sound. So, if we play let's say a D Dorian, it sounds good because of that six being in there, it's a minor mode, but the rate is six. It's something that's very popular in jazz composition. So you might be asked one day, hey, a friend of yours might write a modal piece, and they'll say I want you to walk it. Okay, well you can use chromatics and everything like that, but you want to stay around that mode, so, here's a line, a modal line, let's say, for D Dorian. D, C, B, A, G, F, E, A, D, A, F, G, E, B, C, now, chromatic C sharp. So you notice, whenever I'm landing back on the downbeat of a measure... three, four... One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one...I try for now, to land on the first degree, the third degree, the flat third, or the fifth degree, so that we really feel like we're still staying on that D minor. As you get better you can start throwing in other things in landing on something. You can use some of these eighth notes and triplets for example. So think about playing around with D minor, play the mode, try to do the mode in two octaves as we did the scales, and then try to make some walking patterns with it.

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