Adding a a walking bass line to your blues chord progressions means that you’ll be alternating the bass note of the chord you are playing. Watch the lesson to get a better picture of this technique, after which you should be able to apply it to your own 12 bar blues chord progressions as well.
Here are a couple of tips for using bass walks in blues:
- Usually, for a bass note on the first beat, you want to use the root of the chord,
- A common way to reach the next chord is ascending chromatically
- Use the third and flattened 7 of a chord to play harmony on the higher strings, it’s like 2 guitarists playing at the same time,
- Using muting on the offbeats adds a percussive feel. A nice rhythm would be the following, when using triplets:
1 2 3 Harmony - Play Chuck Bass Play - -