Sweet Freedom and the Shackles of Gospel Bass

This month is summer break for my students, so it is for me as well!!!
All in all, it's been a pretty good month. I decided to give some more time to the church, since I had the weeks to myself. I started playing bass for them, and they asked me to play for their fall concert. This is great, however it's gospel music, which means it's pretty mother-lovin'-spoonful hard!

There're three songs with walking bass; I've never played walking bass. Let me tell you, you gotta know where you are, where you're goin' and how to get there (I'm talkin' chords here). Basically, I ended up memorizing what the guy did on the CD, cuz I have no clue how to do it myself. Hopefully, as I learn more walking bass songs, I'll start to see a pattern. Hopefully, that will also mean that this first walking bass song will be the hardest to learn; it's taken me about two weeks at no more than 30 seconds at a time. Although the chord progression is the same throughout, he never plays the same bass line twice; I guess that's what makes him good.

I've always admired jazz players because of their jedi-like ability to see beforehand where the chords are going to go (they usually pick the scale based on the chord they're currently using), and that usually being a whole lot more than I-IV-V. Now, I'm garnering the same respect (maybe a little less) for walking bass players. Using their midichlorians, they see the locations of the notes of their next chord, how many steps between the next chord and their present chord, and which notes (often chromatic) they can use to reach said chord. That, coupled with a phenomenal memory of which paths they have taken previously, leads to a level of appreciation for the art of bass playing which I had not held previously.

I hope some of these skills will translate well to the guitar; I've already seen some useful cross-over between these sister instruments.

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God bless!