I can actually think of about 10...but let's stick with these three reasons to learn walking bass:

1.  It's A Great Way To Start Learning  How To Create Basslines. By their very nature walking basslines are improvisatory - learning how to create and play these lines is a great way to get started working on creating your own basslines.

2. Fretboard Facility Walking Bass Lines tend to go all over the neck - so by playing them you'll develop facility all over the neck.  Additionally because the kind of jazz songs that you'll play have many more chord changes than typical rock and pop type tunes you'll develop a much wider knowledge of how harmony lays out on the fingerboard.

A side benefit of this is that because walking bass lines are much more fluid - both in terms of position that you're playing in AND also in terms of notes that aren't root notes being played on the downbeat - than traditional bass lines then this really helps get bass players who started by learning lots of scales (most bass players) out of the 'thinking' of playing in scale positions.

3.  Understanding The Language Of Electric Bass

This might be counter intuitive.  But let me add two words:

James Jamerson.

James is often cited as the guy who did the most to develop a language for the electric bass - so what's the connection?

Having studied both Jamerson's bass lines in detail AND walking bass lines in detail, it's clear to see that Jamerson's conception of bass lines was developed playing walking lines. Before he layered on 16th note rhythms and his lines became more complex you can clearly hear this walking bass influence.

Indeed there are three examples I can immediately think of where it's not even disguised: Heatwave by Martha And The Vandellas; Pride and Joy by Marvin Gaye, My Guy by Mary Wells.  There are others for sure...but cue those three up on YouTube and give them a listen.

Back in the day I had to answer this question for real - and in a hurry as my then business partner and piano player had secured residencies playing background music (mostly jazz) at a number of restaurants in London...and the first was just 10 days from when he told me about it.

Having told me when the first of these gigs was, he then wrote out a set list of the kind of tunes he wanted to play. And left me with the job of learning how to play walking bass lines on those tunes.

Now I managed to pull this feat off because without knowing anything about deliberate practice I managed to create a learning system that took me from knowing virtually zero about walking bass to being able to get through 30 or 40 songs on a gig just a few days later.

Oh and there was an important ingredient I needed to add to that system:

Which broke down at around 8 to 10 hours of practice for nine days.

Now these walking bass/background music duo gigs were great - they paid my rent for a year whilst my business partner and I were getting our band off the ground. But there was a side benefit I never anticipated:

I made more progress on the bass guitar in those 9 days than I had in the 4 or 5 years beforehand.

...and that 4 or 5 years included 1000s of hours of practice and 18 months of taking lessons from a guy who was (wrongly) considered the best private teacher in the UK at the time.

At the time I never understood why I made so much progress studying walking bass.

And I didn't until I started learning about deliberate practice in 2008 - and then I made some notes about the learning process I'd undertaken back in '94 to learn walking bass (plus I interviewed my old business partner for his recollections) and I reviewed what I'd done through the lens of what I now knew about deliberate practice.

And I quickly realized something...

...about 40 to 45 % of what I was doing could be omitted from the practice system I'd stumbled upon by hacking different things together (books/primitive software/primitive recording/Atari ST computer).

And I'm 100% confident if I had to do it all again I could make the learning system much more streamlined and efficient - especially given that: (i) the technology I used back in '94 is still around...only its better by an exponential amount; (ii) I've been using deliberate practice in my own life - and with students - since 2009; and (iii) in 2013 I discovered a process that's like adding rocketfuel to the process, this process I call deliberate composition.

Here's what one of my students - a Professor at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York - said about that program:

"In my opinion. after reviewing over 20 Walking Bass courses, books, and videos, your WB 101 is by far the most complete, comprehensive, and workable course. It has everything you need in just the right sequence, with just the right steps, with great graphics (especially the red arrows showing the walking on the notation).

All other courses go too fast too soon, or don't focus on the small beginning steps long enough, or just barrage too much material with no definite plan of action. Your course solves all these issues."

And just to give your eyes a break from all this text, here's a video of me playing a bass line to the chord changes of Fly Me To The Moon.  Kicker 1 is that the bass line was written by one of my students using the deliberate composition process I mentioned above and Kicker 2 is that before he started my program he had less idea that YOU probably do on how to go about creating walking bass lines.  Hit PLAY for Fly Me To The Moon:

Learn the foundations of walking bass - and beyond -  with 30-50  hours of practice in a 30 Day Challenge!

First up, What Is A 30 Day Challenge?

Whether you've been following me for a few days or a few years one thing you may not know is that I'm a total geek about topics like deliberate practice and the neuroscience of learning and how to be a better teacher.

Recently I've been learning about the psychology behind "challenges" and how they can help to promote learning.

Here's how they work:

• focus on a specific piece of skill in the discipline that you are learning
• challenge yourself to practicing that skill for a relatively short period of time (days and weeks rather than months or years) - in this case 30 days organized into six practice weeks of 5 days
• commit to practicing that skill each day for achievable practice sessions of 30 to 60 minutes for each of the 30 days of the challenge

I've had nearly a thousand students take the various different 30 Day Challenges I've run in the last 18 months and the results (from those students who actually DO THE WORK) is extremely good.

The Specific Bass Skill I Chose To Work On For This Challenge

What I chose to work on for this challenge was teaching a foundational approach to walking bass playing and seeing how far we can go in 30 days with an hour of practice for each of those days!

I posted in the private facebook group for the first challenge a couple of questions: #1 How are you finding the Challenge Format?#2 Would you recomend this (or other) 30 Day Challenge to other bass players?  I screenshotted some answers for you to check out:

And this was posted in the Accountability Group for the second Challenge - and was completely unprompted:

I wanted to make this challenge totally affordable but also be enough money so that those students who take the Challenge value what they've invested in and it gives them a kick to do the actual work.  (If they don't do the work...it's just information that's going unused and collecting virtual dust on the Interwebz).

For the 30 Day Challenge itself (plus the bonuses) this Challenge used to retail for $197. For Black Friday though...

To put that in the context of learning bass...if you could book a private Skype lesson with one of the good bass teachers out there (e.g. Ed Friedland, John Goldsby, Janek Gwizdala - most of whom no longer give one on one lessons) you'll be paying anywhere from $70 and up.

Each lesson in the Challenge - and there are 30 of them remember - covers at least as much ground as you would cover in 45 minutes of one on one tuition.  Plus you can go over a lesson as many times as you need to in order to make sure you've got it.  (And if you're still struggling you can drop me an email with questions...).

If you're ready to commit to the Walking Bass 101 Level 1 30 Day Challenge now then click the 'Join Now' button below and do your Paypal  or Credit Card Thang...

Here's how each lesson is presented:

So you can get a flavour of how the 30 day program lays out, I'll do a week be week overview with an example from the last Challenge day of each week.

Week 1 is about setting the foundations and understanding the concept of target notes on beats 1 and 3 and using approach notes on beats 2 and 4 to set those up. Here's an example from Day 5:

In Week 2, the learning of target note/approach note continues. And Week 2 ends up with showing that with just these concepts you can create highly functional walking bass lines. Note that at this point, the rhythm is confined to quarter notes only. Here's a two chorus play through of a line I composed as a demonstration with the chord chnges of Song #1 The Leaves Of Autumn:

In Week 3, vocabulary is expanded using chordal bass lines. Here's an example using the chord changes of Song #3 which combines chordal bass lines and also an advanced topic called the 7/3 resolution. (Note: I've only ONCE seen the 7/3 bass line used in a rock and pop line...hat tip to Pino Palladino...creative use of this resolution in your pop and rock playing will make you a more melodic sounding player!)

In Week 4, vocabulary is expanded using what I've called stock patterns.If I was rewriting this now, I'd call these ideas "walking bass devices." Mixing these in give your lines much more authentic flavour. Here's an example using the first 8 bars of Song #1 again:

In Week 5, vocabulary is expanded with more walking bass devices, an advanced techniqe called tri-tone substitution, and starting to introduce rhythmic variations. This example is a practice exercise using specific types of pitched rhythmic variations that also have harmonic function:

Week 6 is the most important. In Day 28 (if memory serves) there's a 'check list' of the 42 specific ideas that have been introduced in this Challenge. Also, Week 6 talks about the deliberate composition to spontaneous composition process in a way you can use to learn how to do this.

This information on its own - IMO! - is worth the price of entry because no-one else teaches it!

The following example is an exercise that demonstrates triplets being incorporated into walking bass lines:

Paul Wolfe/how-to-play-bass.com

P.S. In case you're one of those people like me who likes to skip to the end...here's the deal:

When you join the Walking Bass 101  30 Day Challenge (for just $127) you're going to get access to a unique 30 Day Challenge that will kick start your understanding of how to put great walking bass lines together AND get you actually playing them!  Plus there's several hundred dollars of bonuses....so you've got full value for money BEFORE you even go to the first training day!