If you’ve read the series of articles that preceded this page, you’ve already heard this story. To recap:

•  I needed to learn to play walking bass in 10 days due to a series of background music gigs that my business partner Jon had gone and landed

•  The book that helped get me from Nought to Sixty was Building Walking Basslines by Ed Friedland. And yeah, that should probably be more like Nought To Thirty 😉

Now if you are interested in playing walking bass lines you might be thinking: Cool, I’ll make out like Paul did and go and buy Ed’s book.

Before you do…..there’s some important information I’ve not told you.

Having analyzed what I remember of how I practiced that material  through the lens of what I now know about deliberate practice ….

…I’d be surprised if 1 in 100 players who are at the playing level now that I was then could replicate the results that I got. As I’ve said, I made more progress as a bass player in those 10 days than I had in the previous 4 or 5 years of study and playing.

Without knowing what I was doing, "the practice system" I created back in the day filled in the main three learning holes that are present in Building Walking Basslines. Namely:

1. The real world chord progressions came  with practice tracks (on a cassette tape for me). Those practice tracks are at real world tempos. 120 BPM. 140 BPM. 160 BPM. And faster. For most students to implement a new concept at these tempos is next to impossible.

2. The real world chord progressions themselves are another issue. Most 'standards' are 32 bars long. Combine trying to implement new playing concepts with tempos above 100 BPM and 32 bar long chord progressions that are constantly shifting makes the complexity of the learning task exponentially more difficult.

3. The final learning hole is that in order to play a new walking bass concept at any tempo in an improvisatory manner requires thorough understanding and assimilation BEFORE you get to that point.

That's why I've put together the Building Walking Basslines Workbook so that bass players just like you can benefit from this system.

The Building Walking Basslines workbook fills those learning holes by going broader (more songs, more chord progressions) and more granualar (dividing a 32 bar progression up into 8 bar increments, slowing the tempos down so they are much more manageable).

Before we go on, here’s a short video clip of me playing a walking bass line to the chord progression of Fly Me To The Moon. This bass line was created by Nigel, one of my previous students…and whilst it’s not a Ray Brown or Ron Carter level world beater, it’s a very passable and functional walking bass line.

One important thing to remember: when Nigel started the course he knew absolutely nothing about walking bass lines. So if you’re thinking he had some kind of advantage over you – and that YOU couldn’t do this….well, think again.

Onwards.

The workbook is split into 32 installments (or columns).

Each installment consists of the following elements:

• The lesson in PDF format that you can download.
• A web version of the lesson.
• Majority of musical examples filmed so you can see, and hear, exactly how they should sound.
• All musical examples have tab.
• Downloadable MP3 practice tracks in each lesson.
• You also get access to the 'Song Library.' This contains all the tracks you've already downloaded....plus tracks for a bunch of songs that aren't explicitly featured in the workbook. (THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS)
• By the end of the workbook, if you've done your work then you'll have a library of around 50 songs that you can confidently 'walk' through at performance tempos.
• Bonus: 10 rhythmic variations that you can add to your quarter note lines (this is a section of my book Creating Walking Basslines, which is a sequel to the workbook.)
• Black Friday Bonus Only: Walking Bass Corner. This is part of a series of lessons I wrote for some private students....and covers taking the learning concepts from this Workbook and applying them to bass lines for bossa novas, 3:4 time, 6:8 time and the like. PDF only. (Additional 140 odd pages of lessons).

There are 32 installment in The Building Walking Basslines Workbook.  If you were going to take 32 lessons with Ed Friedland himself to cover the same ground I think you'd be investing well north of $2000 for 30 lessons.  And that's without factoring in travel costs and the opportunity cost of travel time if those lessons are face to face.

The Building Walking Basslines Workbook is priced at less than $4 a lesson....just...

To put that in context....if you went through two lessons of the workbook every week, it would take 16 weeks to work through the program. At less than $4 a week that makes your investment less than the price of a couple of cups of cheap coffee (not that fancy Starbucks stuff) per week.  On its own that represents a great investment in your future bass playing...

• 32 lessons  - over 300 pages in PDF
• Immediate access to the walking bass song library  (chord charts, practice tracks for complete songs, songs split into constituent sections, practice tracks for constituent sections, multiple tempos, etc ) (THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS)
• Access to 10 Rhythmic Variations you can apply to your quarter note walking lines (Section 3 of my book CREATING WALKING BASS LINES)
• Bonus Lesson:Collection of "Walking Bass Corner" columns - another 140 pages of PDF lessons.

P.S. If you don't know how to play walking bass...this is the most cost effective way to get started with a proven method (over 600 prior students) - and from what I've seen (and I confess I've not seen everything!) this is the only method where all the principles of deliberate practice were purposefully built into the course from the ground up.

Hitting the 'Join Now' button is the easiest and most cost effective way to get started learning to walk on the bass.