Walking Bass & Comping for Jazz Guitar

Walking bass lines and jazz comping techniques provide guitarists with a sophisticated and orchestral approach to playing solo guitar and accompanying others in any situation where there’s no bassist. Sean McGowan offers an intuitive, and very effective approach to learning these skills in his second TrueFire course, Walking Bass & Comping for Jazz Guitar.

”In this course, we’ll explore a variety of formats including 12-Bar Blues, Rhythm Changes, and jazz standard progressions. We’ll start by building a walking bass line through the changes and then gradually add in chord voicings, just as you would in a real-time performance situation."

Sean will guide you through 10 performance studies where you’ll explore substitutions, triplets, and other rhythmic devices to add momentum. You’ll work with a variety chord forms, 2-5-1 and cycle-four progressions incorporating pedal tones and cluster voicings, big band voicings, shout rhythms and many other aspects of this exciting technique.

Sean starts the course with a primer covering essential left and right-hand techniques you'll need to develop before playing multiple parts in time. These exercises will help you develop independence between the bass and chord parts, achieve different articulations, and build a solid swing time feel. The exercises start out very simply by using the thumb and then add chord voicings and rhythms with a "claw" technique, which gradually increase in difficulty and syncopation.

Sean will then perform the following ten etudes and then break them down note-for-note explaining all of the key techniques and approaches along the way. You will develop your own Walking Bass & Comping technique by playing your way through the course.

All of the performances are tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes. You’ll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can play, loop and slow down the tab and notation as you work through the lessons.

Grab your guitar and let your fingers do the walking with Sean McGowan!