How many bass players does it take to screw in a light bulb? None, the piano player can do it with his left hand. In this IROCKU Tip we’ll learn how to play walking bass lines with our left hand.
Walking bass lines are used throughout rock, jazz, and blues. For the chord progression in this lesson, we use the E twelve-bar blues progressions. As piano players we like to play in the key of C but if you are playing in a band, guitarists prefer playing in the keys of E or A. It’s pretty rare for a guitarist to call out a blues song in C so as keyboardists we need to learn the guitar keys. In this video we teach how to create your own walking bass lines using a quarter-note groove. We start out with a walking bass line using just the root and fifth of each chord. We then add lower extensions of the fifth, then the third, then octaves, and we then teach how to connect the chords using notes from the mixolydian scale of each chord, and finally using chromatic approaches. This lesson also teaches how to spice up the quarter note groove with triplet skip notes which will drive the bass line. Enjoy!
Levels: Intermediate-Advanced.
The IROCKU Piano Tips videos are available to all Annual Members. Click on the image below to learn more.
IROCKU Piano Tips cover piano techniques and fundamentals, improvisation, rhythm and groove, progressions, rhythm patterns, piano accompaniment, music theory and riffs.
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IROCKU Piano Tips
Learn how to play rock and blues piano from one of rock’s greatest. Chuck Leavell, legendary keyboardist for The Rolling Stones, The Allman Bros, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and more.
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