Exploring Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind"

First up, let's look at my favorite song, Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind."

Billy wrote this when he first moved to LA and was heading back to New York, taking the Greyhound bus, traveling on the Hudson River line. I've seen Billy play this a few times, and I'm not ashamed to tell you that when I saw him perform this in New York, I think the romanticism of it all got to me.

And of course, I cried.

Breakdown of the Song

Now we're going to look at this song and break it down. We'll explore:

• Making this song your own
• Ideas to improvise over the top of it
• Some clever techniques he uses with the left hand

And of course, just having some fun with it!

The A Section

Let's start right at the top, the A section. You'll see this on the sheet music. We're going to break this down in the simplest form:

• C
• E7
• A minor 7
• G7
• C7
• F
• A7
• D minor
• B flat

Now watch this. I'm going to play it at speed. See if you notice what the left hand is doing.

Did you see that there? It's so clever. Billy is using the right hand to take the chords all over the place, but the left hand just moves down like this, every single note.

The genius of Billy Joel.

Back to the F to a G7, and that's where we hit the main turnaround: "I'm in a New York state of mind."

The Left Hand Technique

One other thing you may have noticed is that the left hand is doing throughout this whole thing. Billy's almost using a stride piano left hand.

Let's just look at the left hand; I won't play anything with the right hand. Watch what he's doing.

Of course, stride was born from jazz, blues, swing, and ragtime. The real stride is quite fast and would sound something like this, with the left hand constantly jumping:

• Hitting the root note (the bass player's part)
• Bringing it up for the chord element

But of course, Billy slows it right down.

Just the left hand:

Some folks like to get away, they take a holiday from the neighborhood.
F Harbor flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood.

It's a really nice way that Billy brings in that blues and jazz, and swing feel into a number that really isn't that.

We're going to look at some ideas that you can use with the right hand to make it just that.