Bass Line Walk

The foundation for any gospel type fast movement is the bass line walk. We show you three different bass line walks.

This is where I go really slow as this is the foundation to your up-tempo devotional service songs. More importantly, I show you the left hand crossover tricks with your left hand to help increase your speed and preciseness.

VERY IMPORTANT: I also teach you the bass line walk in terms of the number system, so you can apply it in any key. I give you some good visual marker secrets that have helped me out when trying to figure out the bass walk in the keys of B, D, and E. This can be very difficult, but with the right tricks, you’ll be doing your bass line walk in every key.

Right Hand Chords with Bass

Now let’s focus on your right hand. So now I focus on just the right hand movements. You see if I give you right-hand and left-hand all at the same time, then you’ll get frustrated and lost. So I took my time to handle them both separately. This whole bass line walk with right-hand thing is very tricky. So let’s handle the right hand chords next.

Bass Walk and Right Hand Coordination
Now, let’s put it all together. This is where I take a lot of time dealing with timing and coordination with tons of drills and exercises. With putting both hands together, it is very, very important to teach you the down beat and how to play in front or behind the beat. It’s called a swing beat. So I teach you the basic way, then I have to teach you how to make it swing, so that you sound professional. This is probably the longest chapter in the DVD, because it’s the most important for church choir songs, devotional, and any up-tempo gospel movement.

Right Hand Churchy Standards

Since the bass line walk is pretty standard. It’s important to further your vocabulary of right hand ‘stuff’ to play with your left hand. You don’t want to sound like a robot and play the same right hand licks over and over, since the gospel movements are so repetitive. So, we give you some right hand variations so you can mix it up a bit.

1-4 Progression

The 1-4 progression is the foundation to devotional service: You don’t know like I know; This Little Light of Mine; Glory, Glory Hallelujah….all of these movements share the same chord structure and bass walk. This is the foundation progression in your church service chords and we spend a lot of time going through how to transition from the 1 to the 4 and then to get back with the 2-5-1.

Gospelly Progression Standards

These movements are what I call staples in gospel music. Some things you just HAVE TO PLAY. No matter how contemporary, or how jazz you are. No matter how advanced of a player, there are some things that you just have to know how to play in church. They are standards and staples. It’s like, no matter how many new hamburgers McDonalds make. They will always have the Big Mac. So these movements are your must-haves in gospel and from the new beginner, to the most advanced musician, we all play them.

Deacon's Prayer and Preacher Chords

Did you know when the deacon is tuning up and praying, that it’s almost the same as playing preacher chords, but with some subtle nuances? If the deacon is tuning up and praying, then you can’t just leave him hanging. I teach you how to follow the deacon when he’s praying in tune. Also, what would a good old fashion church service be without preaching chords? I also give you some licks to play as well with your preaching chords.

NEWSFLASH: I TEACH YOU A VERY SIMPLE APPROACH TO PLAYING YOUR PREACHER CHORDS IN EVERY SINGLE KEY. THERE IS NOTHING MORE EMBARRASSING AND FRUSTRATING THEN TO TRY TO BE LOST WHEN PLAYING PREACHER CHORDS IN B, E, D, AND A!

Baptism - Take Me to the Water

What would a church service be without the oh so familiar hymn: “Take Me to the Water.” These are gospel standards that you must have. Actually, I don’t even know of any other songs they usually sing when baptism is going on…hahaha. Take me to the Water is a must. The difficult part with this song is that it’s so basic, that it’s hard to figure out how to fill up the song. I teach you some important riffs and licks to help fill the song up more as well.

Prayer Time - "Prey for Me" (Remixxx)

This is the time in the church service, where it’s an alter call prayer. You know what an alter call prayer is. It’s usually the time before the preaching, where everyone comes up to the alter and it’s prayer time. But before going up, there is always an old motha who sings the song Pray for Me….While I’m on this tedious journey…I want Jesus to pray for me. This one I had a little fun with. I kind of remixed it a little bit. I kept it gospel, but I used a subtle relative major trick to give it a different feel.

I Love You Lord Today and Remix!

Now it’s time for the youth choir to sing and if you go to an old school churchy-church, then you know that the song I Love You, is as contemporary as it gets….hahaha. This is a very popular church service staple song. I show you the standard way and give you a more contemporary way to play the songs as well. What is so sweet about this movement is that I show you one chord movement that will totally change your playing forever. This is one of those life changing chords I was talking about. These are simple chords that you probably have been trying to figure out for a very long time, but couldn’t grasp. It’s a very popular trick that will totally take this song to new heights.

Amazing Grace with Remix
I had fun with this one. I gave you some pretty sweet changes to play with Amazing Grace. I gave you some licks and some soloing things you can do while playing Amazing Grace.

Other movements…

Talk Music

On the Urban Worship DVD's I focused on talk music from a contemporary perspective, but not this DVD. The talk music taught on this DVD are classic gospel sounding progressions that you can find yourself hearing in an urban-gospel church. I tried to give you the most important gospel talk music standards, so you can begin to build your repertoire and vocabulary of chords. Before you can branch out and do your own chords, it is a good idea to learn the gospel standards first. After that, I begin to teach you how to apply these standards while adding passing tones and your own personality.

Shouting Music

Of course, what would an old school service be like, without shouting music. The hardest part about shouting music is coordinating your left and right hands. I teach you this. It is also important to learn the difference between the devotional bass line walk and a shouting bass line walk. They are very different and I show you when, and how to use it. The #1 thing for a beginner is coordination and I'll show you the secrets to starting slow and building up to faster coordination tricks. I also teach you the important trick of how to shout in every key and how to find the sweet spots to shouting music.