I do like modern jazz a lot but there's one thing I've always wondered. Coming from listening to a lot of baroque and classical music, plus the usual popular music, I'm used to basslines following a pretty standard sequence of notes (the most obvious being a ground bass in baroque a la Canon and Gigue).
When you hear those upbeat modern jazz numbers where the bass player is playing a seemingly semi random sequence of bass notes, are there established sequences or are they literally just playing a random notes within a loose rule so it doesn't sound completely nonharmonic?