julietgreen

Aw - great advice all you folks! Got the thing in my hands first time today and, yeah, index finger is a little sore, but it was fun. Played a little bit through some 'slow jazz' 2-feel rooty things and a touch of slow bossa. Probably rubbish technique full of errors but I will get some lessons and am already looking at the Discover Double Bass site!

I'm just about to acquire a 3/4 double bass. I've only played electric before, though have done a bit of fretless. Any tips? What will it be like? Is it like learning from scratch or are there transferable skills?

Once upon a time I struggled to find a bassist that could play afro-cuban lines. There have always been plenty of bassists in this part of the world, along with saxophone players and vocalists. Keyboard and trumpet are the rarities, though my current struggle is to find female musicians at all.

Yes. True.

Nice track.

Oh phew! Thanks for that. Explains a lot. Face-palm! It was late last night. Can I plead tiredness? 😌

Do you play this? How? I notice the suggested bass in the Real Book is quite different from the Coltrane recording. Which one do you do or do you do something quite different?

Yep. This.

'Fine' is a relative term. I've I'm given a lead sheet, I can fight my way through something like Stella. I can't do that with faster numbers hence thinking about working out a few lines first. I want to dep for bass with a local jazz band.

Ah well Moondance was one of the first things I ever did play on bass.

To be fair, I'm doing all of that. Interesting exchange, though. Some seem to disapprove of the use of 'algorithms' for music on a computer - all music is algorithms, though. Creativity comes from having these embedded, either through years of study, or through having the 'knack' plus years of study. I'm not there yet.

Having said that, I'm just downloading 'Improvisor' which I had on my old PC. I was, however, looking for an app.

I'm working my way through learning how to 'walk' to a chord sequence. I've got the theory, fine. Putting it into practice is more of a challenge. Recently I started trying to think through a few fast jazz numbers - work out what would sound ok as a walking bassline. I felt it would be handy to have a piece of software that generated a line quickly from the chords and turns it into TAB, and then incorporate some of that if it looked useful. My composer software, Finale, used to do this, but the upgrade doesn't. Anyone know of anything that does?

I'm very much missing playing, since the demise of the last band I was in. It struck me it would be a good opportunity to improve technically etc. A summer school type thing would suit me but I don't know if such a thing exists. Anybody know of any?

[quote name='Adrenochrome' timestamp='1503496766' post='3358713'] Can you glue or strap any bits of your hand that need it? Painkillers? Sit on a stool to take some weight of your fretting hand? Get help loading in/out? [/quote] Definitely make the most of THAT one!

I did this a couple of times. The first time I fell off my bike and managed to get through with painkillers - fretting hand. The second time, all I did was lift a speaker off a stand - badly. I couldn't touch or move the thumb for 2 weeks - plucking hand. Had to cancel sax gigs, but managed to fumble through a bit of bass. Go for the gig as long as you can play a bit and no obviously fancy bass parts needed. Let us know how you get on. I recommend aspirin!

Many thanks to all for advice - particularly to those who explained how they learned, themselves. I have been through a fair number of the 'learn to play walking bass' type recommendations and I have a reasonable knowledge of chord structure and types. It's the practical bit of putting it into a musical context at the rate the changes happen, that I'm still cack-handed with. Making slow progress...

Still - I wondered how others actually learned.

[quote name='Coilte' timestamp='1503068386' post='3355502'] If you are starting from scratch then I'd recommend : [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Walking-Jazz-Lines-for-Bass-Music-Book-with-Audio-Access-/272526565447?hash=item3f73d96047:g:HKYAAOSw3mpXK1AY"]http://www.ebay.co.u...KYAAOSw3mpXK1AY[/url] or [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ7MfADYRmg"]https://www.youtube....h?v=UZ7MfADYRmg[/url] There is a series of about ten lessons here, starting basic and going on from that. Later on you could try : [url="http://www.alfred.com/Products/Todd-Johnson-Walking-Bass-Line-Module-System-Volume-2-Scale-Modules--00-30025.aspx"]http://www.alfred.co...--00-30025.aspx[/url] [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Building-Walking-Bass-Lines-Ed-Friedland-Paperback-New-Book-Free-UK-Delivery-/222273401271?hash=item33c086f1b7:g:7hgAAOSw8w1X9s8x"]http://www.ebay.co.u...hgAAOSw8w1X9s8x[/url] [url="http://www.shermusic.com/1883217504.php"]http://www.shermusic.../1883217504.php[/url] [/quote] Lots of good links. Many thanks. I find I get so far with the basic part of the lesson and then the jump to actually playing seems a massive one! I'll definitely have a go at those.

[quote name='lownote12' timestamp='1503067786' post='3355496'] talkingbass.net walking bass over blues. made sense to me because i had an immediate use for it [/quote] Thanks for that. I learned the blues walking bassline as one of the first things I did on bass, so that comes naturally as long as it's a standard 12 bars. As soon as it diverges from that, I get all finger-tied.

I set myself a goal this summer to learn to play walking basslines to chord sheets. How did you learn?

Absolutely go for it, mate! Bass is a good instrument to learn.

Thanks, mate! I wasn't being cheeky, by the way. I just wondered if I'd missed something on the bass chat icon bar.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1498411558' post='3324387'] what I do is: - paste the link - remove the 's' from the 'https' bit - add 'media' tags at each end. That is the word 'media' (no quotes) surrounded by [ and ] characters, on the first tag. And for the second (end) tag put '/media' instead, surrounded by the [ ]... I'd type it here but then the forum software tries to use it and won't display it The result is: [media]http://youtu.be/JcUphKIbLm8[/media] [/quote] Oh! Not completely straightforward then! Cheers for that.