I've been learning to play bass a year ago... I thought I'd be easy since I play guitar. However, I discovered that techniques differ considerably. Anyway, I've been practicing some songs such as "Autumn Leaves" and "Tune up" from the real book. I play with some other amateur musicians.

The questions is: How can I play the walking bass following the harmony and, at the same time, communicating with the soloist and the drums? I've tried using the arpegiated cords.

So for example if the bar is A-7  I'd play A C E G.

It sounds ok, but I've heard some other musicians and noticed they use a very different style. It's more Chromatic.... but how do they do it?

it is what I would call a half chromatic scale, also you don't have to walk it, you can also skip along example would be 1,2,and 3, 4.using the notes,A,B,C,D,E flat , E,G, G flat .
I hope that helps a bit

You also can use

A G E G  | A  for a7

or

A Gb E Gb | A for A7
similar to A F# E F# | A

as a walking bass

Hi, walking bass, i think that it is used especialy in Jazz music. I have never played Jazz music, although i play bass guitar almost 10 years, and I can play every music stile from pop, rock, metal, bluze, but i would like to learn jazz also. Can you tell me what songs do you want to play, and where can i find it, and i will try to play that songs and then i could tell you how do i play it.

Ok. Jazz songs are called "Standards". You can find a lot of standards in the "real book". The songs I've played so far are:

Autumn Leaves
All Blues
Straight no Chaser
Footprints
So what


You can also listen to a lot of Jazzmen who are amazing. However, I prefer Miles Davis who's my favorite. Try and listen to his "Kind of Blue" album.


Take a look at the "real Book" and then tell me how you build up a walking bass.


I'm looking forward to hearing from you. 

I am new here, I really dont know what is the "real book", so if you can tell me...

I'm not much of a bass player, but some of the jazz bass player use the same tech, that alot of other musicians use.  Think of the tones of the chords and how you would travel thru the passing tones to get there.  Some things that tend to sound good are when going up to a note, chromatics tend to go up. When going down to a note chromatics down.
 
EI.  Up  E to a A.    E, G,G#, A  or down  to a A:  B, Bb, A .  (very simple examples).
 Also lots of players tend to play 4th's in jazz  so they can play in and out of maj/min modes.

"A fake book is simply a book full of lead-sheets. A lead-sheet is the melody, chords indicated (usually without fret board diagrams), and the lyrics (often not even all the verses.)


It is called a fake book so that a band can "fake" the song in performance, as if they really knew it and had practiced it before.


They grew up in the early days of the commercial music scene when a musician or a band began earning much (if not all) of an evening's money from the tip jar. When a patron asks if you can perform a song, if you say "Yes, we'll get to that in the next set" you will get a tip (as the evening goes on and the patrons are more sauced the tips often grow from Ones to Fives to Tens, and for especially sentimental song requests from singles maybe even a Twenty), but if you say, "Sorry, we don't know that one" you get grumbling about how the lounge shouldn't hire such stupid s**ts." If there is too much grumbling to the bartender or the manager, you don't get hired back.


So if you have a couple of fake books, each with 200-600 (or in the case of the new generations of Hal Leonard and Warner Brothers and Columbia "legal" fake books, as many as 1200 songs), you will stand a much better chance of actually being able to fill the requests.


In the early days the fake books were illegal because some enterprising individual would buy the piano-vocal books (the only way pop music was available commercially) and cut out the melody line (with the chords and the lyrics) and paste it onto a single page (piano-vocal books often take 4-5 pages for a single song), compiling the songs he/she received the most requests for. Then other musicians would ask if they could buy a copy of that book, so the individual would photocopy the book and sell it for $30-$60, in flagrant violation of the copyright laws since no royalties were paid to the copyright owners.


These days the big three publishers have taken to creating and selling their own fake books, from all-purpose ones, to specific category books such as Broadway, Jazz, Country, Christmas, Rock, R&B, Latin.


The biggest fake book came out of Berklee College of Music (not officially, but from students there) in the 60s, called the Real Book. It ultimately came to have three volumes, but the first one is still the BIG modern jazz-mixed-with-standards book. Sher publications came on the scene offering their supposedly "correct" versions of many of the Real Book tunes, although why they didn't just recreate the original Real Book is beyond me. The Sher books, as well as all the modern ones from Hal Leonard, WB and Columbia are entirely legal, with permission gained and royalties paid.


In the early days it was very much a matter of buying from the back of a station wagon on a dimly lit corner late at night, or of walking into a music store and speaking to the owner and saying something like "Joe Smith sent me to talk to you about a special book you have for sale." Then you would hand over $35 (by the time I arrived on the scene that was what the Real Book cost) and get a plain brown bag with the illicit treasure inside. Many music stores got hauled into court for selling them. These days it seems as if the publishing industry couldn't care less about them, but the Real Book (NOT the ones Sher sells) is still illegal."

from: http://www.jazzguitarfaq.com/FAQ00015.htm

Thanks for explanations, i didnt know about fake books and real books, in our country you can by that without problems. So I will try to find Miles Davis and to listen it. You mentioned songs, like Autumn Leaves, All blues, Straight no Chaiser, Footprints and So what, and if you can tell me who is autor of those songs, or who plays that, so i can find it, i havent listened so much jazz so far, but its never late to start...

so what & all blues by miles davis

footprints by wayne shorter

straight, no chaser by Thelonious monk

autumn leaves by joseph kosma

I totally agree, nunca es tarde para empezar.

Thanks for information, i will find those songs and hear you soon....

I found the song So what from Miles Davies, i couldnt find others, sorry.
And there is very good walking bass after intro. Try to play D E F G A G F E D #C C H #A A F E, you can improvise as well..