What is a walking base line?

Answer 1

This is a bass pattern that tends to follow the amount of beats in a bar. For example, most music has '4 beats to a bar', and a walking bass would tend to be a pattern that sticks to that rhythm. Thus you here mainly a series of bass notes each lasting one beat. The notes tend to go up or down like a scale or arpeggio, hence 'walking bass'. You hear it mostly in mainstream Jazz Music, but also in some 1950s Rock n Roll. An alternative bass line would maybe play on beats 1 and 3 (used more in country-type music), or some derivation of latin beats. Or else long sustained notes. Of course you also find more complex lines - in funk for example.