page_title: Bassline
section_title: Examples
hierarchical_section_title: Bassline / Walking bass / Examples
caption_attribution_description: English: Elgar Symphony No 1 opening
context_page_description: A bassline is the term used in many styles of music, such as jazz, blues, funk, dub and electronic, traditional music, or classical music for the low-pitched instrumental part or line played by a rhythm section instrument such as the electric bass, double bass, cello, tuba or keyboard. In unaccompanied solo performance, basslines may simply be played in the lower register of any instrument such as guitar or piano while melody and/or further accompaniment is provided in the middle or upper register. In solo music for piano and pipe organ, these instruments have an excellent lower register that can be used to play a deep bassline. On organs, the bass line is typically played using the pedal keyboard and massive 16' and 32' bass pipes.
context_section_description: Walking bass in the pedal keyboard part of Baroque organ music (J.S. Bach's Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659, from the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes):
  play 
  
  Other walking bass lines can be heard in the opening movements of Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 22 (nicknamed "The Philosopher"), Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 and Edward Elgar's Symphony No. 1.
  Walking bass often alternates quarter notes:
  play 
  giving rise to the term.
  Many boogie-woogie basslines are walking bass lines:
  Play in G  or in C 
  Walking bass often moves in stepwise (scalar) motion to successive chord roots, such as often in country music:
  Play 
  In this example, the last two quarter notes of the second measure, D and E, "walk" up from the first quarter note in that measure, C, to the first note of the third measure, F (C and F are the roots of the chords in the first through second and third through fourth measures, respectively).
  In both cases, "walking" refers both to the steady duple rhythm (one step after the other) and to the strong directional motion created; in the examples above, from C to F and back in the second, and from root to seventh and back in the first.
  In bebop jazz, the walking bass has a stabilising effect, offsetting and providing a foil to the complexity of the improvised melodic lines, for example in Sonny Rollins’ “Blue Seven”.
caption: Elgar Symphony No 1 opening
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