Walking Bass Lines by Joe Hubbard

Walking Bass Lines by Joe Hubbard… Hi my bass friends!  In this issue, I want to talk about something different, a great book about walking bass lines written by bass master Joe Hubbard (www.joehubbardbass.com). I discovered him some years ago in a bass magazine interview, and he proposes a fantastic exercise, called the “note finder”, which I still use for my students today!

Joe is a Berklee graduated and studied (like me) with the best teacher you could have in the world, Charlie Banacos.

I really love “Walking Bass Lines” and I think that it is very useful for the serious bass player who wants to learn to play great walking bass lines. I completely agree with Joe about the concepts used in this book, especially when he claims that  “chord tones are the cornerstone to understanding how to create interesting bass lines. Chord tones allow the bassist to clearly outline any harmonic progression”. I think this is perfect!

The book is very clear, well organized and well written.

These are the chapters of the book:

1. Anatomy of a walking bass line

2. Breaking down the components

3. Ten fundamental bass lines

4. Harmonic rhythm adaptation principle

5. Application to the ‘jazz blues’ progression

6. Chord voicings for jazz blues progression

7. The r-2-3-5 pattern

8. The descending scale pattern

9. The r-5-double chromatic below pattern

10. The r-3-double chromatic above pattern

11. The triad-chromatic below pattern

12. The triad-chromatic above pattern

13. The r-chromatic below-r-chromatic above pattern

14. The r-chromatic below-r-chromatic below pattern

15. The r-chromatic above-7-r pattern

16. The r-double chromatic below-r pattern

17. The walking bass line matrix

18. Mixed bag blues- 9-choruses of walking bass lines

In the book Joe identifies ten fundamental bass lines that he developed using different progressions. By the end of the book I’m sure that everyone will be able to create countless interesting walking bass lines.

Walking Bass Lines is available at joehubbardbass.com/purchase-cds/

Great book… thank you Joe!

Ciao

Andréa