The Instant Walking Bass 'Hack': Nail Your 2-5-1’s With A Single Lick

What if you could sound great playing walking bass lines over THE most common chord progression in jazz, but without needing to know everything about scales, chords arpeggios and all that stuff? Hi, I’m Luke from Become A Bassist and in this bass lesson, you’re going to learn a walking bass hack that you can add to your own walking bass line arsenal in less than a minute. [Video Intro] Welcome to Become A Bassist where it’s all about insanely practical No-BS bass lessons that let you play better bass, have more fun and become the best bassist you can possibly be! We’ve got another super quick one today! We’re diving into walking bass. Now if you’ve ever played a jazz song before, you’ve probably come across the 2-5-1 progression. In the key of C, it looks like this. Now when I was starting out, I thought you basically needed a masters degree in music theory just to scrape by with walking bass lines, but that’s just not true. Of course I’d encourage you to learn all the scales and chords and all that stuff, but Right now though, I want to show you a trick that works even if you only know the most basic thing like the major scale. If you play your C-major scale - C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C - these are the notes we’ll use for this little trick. Actually, there’s one more thing - we’re going to extend that major scale up by one note - up to the D right here. This hack is simple. Just start on that D right there and come down the scale, one quarter note at a time and you will have perfectly outlined that 2-5-1. It’ll sound like this [plays] 2-chord, 5-chord and landing on the 1. With a play along track, it’ll sound like this. [plays] Let’s go again. [plays] 2-5-1. Of course you could play it in a different position [plays] Same exact notes, just in a different place on the bass. That’s totally fine too. You can use this in absolutely any key as well. If your progression was Bbm7, Eb7, AbMaj7, you’d start on the note Bb and play the exact same idea. [plays] 2-5-1. If you had a 2-5-1 in D, you’d have Em7, A7 and DMaj7, so you’d start on the 2nd note of D major - the E right here - and come down D major scale from that point. [plays] Exact same idea, just in a different key.