Guitar Walking Basses

Using walking basses is a common technique used to write worship songs. You see this in songs like ‘As A Deer’.  You can also use this technique to make a song arrangement. I show some examples in our Music Theory Course of how to take a song and make many different arrangements of it. In the video below is a video showing how to find the walking basses in three different keys.

There are examples in the key of ‘C’, ‘D’, and ‘G’. In the key of ‘C’ there are no sharps or flats, so the notes of the descending scale are C, B, A, G, F, E D and the back to C. In the video below you learn that the descending scale often moves to the ‘V’ or ‘V7’ chord between the last two notes, or last two chords.

In the picture you can see one example using the chords ‘C’, ‘C/B’, ‘Am7′, Am7/G’, ‘F’, ‘F/E’, ‘G7’, then ‘C’. The note underneath a slash ‘/’ is always the bass note. In the video the chord should have been called ‘Am7/G’ instead of ‘Am/G’. It’s actually the chord in the picture.

In the key of ‘D’ the bass notes are ‘D’, ‘C#’, ‘B’, ‘A’, ‘G’, ‘F#’, ‘E’, ‘A’ (which is the V), and ‘D’. In the key of ‘G’ the descending bass notes are ‘G’, ‘F#’, ‘E’, ‘D’, ‘C’, ‘B’, ‘A’, ‘D’ (the V), and ‘D’.