Building a walking bass line (4 quarter notes to a measure) is great practice for learning the fretboard. Since I come from a bluegrass background, I tend to start with the root on the 1st and the 5 on the 3rd. The 2nd can be any chord tone and the 4th is a leading tone.
If I had the following progression /G/C/G/D/ I might design a bass line as follows:
/G B D E/C E G A/G B D C/D G A F#/G
Working something like that out is a great way to learn the fretboard and to begin to think about putting pleasing lines together. If you have a melody line, you can even begin to work some simple counterpoint into your lines.
|