Walking Bass Chord Comping in Jazz Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name is Dustin, and I am going to talk about the walking bass comping style. It is a simple technique, but takes quite a while to develop to the point where you can use it freely, in whatever chord progression you are playing. But I will show you a two bar chord progression that resolves to a G major 7 on the down beat of the third major, and hopefully you can take what you have learned from this and apply it to whatever chord progression you are playing. So my simple progression starts with a B minor 7, holds for two beats, moves to an E 7, hold that for two beats, A minor 7, two beats, D 7, for two beats resolves in the G major…on the downbeat of the third measure. So the base movement sounds like this… so instead of holding the root of each chord for both beats, I am going to hit the root of the chord for beats one and three, and then on beats two and four, I am going to move to a passing tone. This passing tone is going to be a half step either below or above the root for the next chord, so it is going to sound something like this… at full speed… now to put chords on top of that, you just use your index, middle and ring finger and apply the chord accents, start simple and just put them on the down beats, then try the up… then try the down and the up… then try maybe a triplet feel something like this…so feel free to intermingle those rhythmic ideas, and in no time you will be able to throw the chord accents wherever you want. "