There are probably a few words/phrases in the bass playing world, and particularly in the field of learning, that immediately evoke one of those "love it or hate it" feeling. And there is no doubt that walking bass is one of those.
Those who belong to the latter category mostly don't like the kind of music typically related to this sort of bass lines and feel, i.e. jazz and blues, but they actually fail to perceive this approach to building the foundation in other musical styles, such as pop, rock, ska etc.
In terms of learning bass, the "dislikers" tend to shun the thing for being tedious and lacking excitement. What they fail to see, however, is that both arguments are mostly applicable in the early stages of work, but in the long term it can be downright exhilarating. But, even more importantly, the overall learning benefits from embarking on this path are numerous and hard to reach otherwise. Without going into a long rant, the study of the walking bass will build your harmonic understanding of music as a whole, develop your sense of pulse and rhythm, propel the command of the fingerboard in a non-artificial way etc.
Now, while I plan to do some in-depth coverage of some excellent material available on the subject, there are a couple of very good free online resources that can give you a good start and form a solid foundation for any future study, should you decide to undertake it. If not, this could be enough to open enough doors to better understanding of what you are doing as a bassist in any other kind of band.
Let me begin with someone the readers of this blog are probably acquainted with - Posido Vega. He has what would probably be adequately described as extended lesson about the walking bass, covering all the necessary ingredients: chord tones, scale tones, chromatic approaches. Besides that, he also provides the recipe for putting it all together (i.e. how to organize your learning), as well as a handful of useful "cookbooks" (i.e. books by renowned authors). The lesson is presented in text, with music examples in standard notation and tablature.
The other, but by no means lesser, website that you should visit is the aptly titled Walking Bass Lessons by Tomasz Ziobro. He touches upon the same topics as in the previous case, naturally, but in a somewhat more comprehensive manner, with individual lessons on the abovementioned "ingredients", with the addition of voice leading. Another difference is the formatting of the material, where the underlying theoretical concepts are offered in writing, but the main segment is done in video. As the matter of fact, for the literary challenged, the videos are available on Ziobro's Youtube channel, along with a bunch of his other bass lessons.
So, there you have it! I hope this will both encourage you to tackle the interesting realm of walking bass and help pointing you in the right direction.
