Take the A Train - Lesson

Now, going to start playing a really well-known standard, Take the A Train, famous from Duke Ellington's songbook, written by Billy Strayhorn. This is something that everyone will recognize.

AABA Form Overview

It's actually our first proper AABA form tune. So by AABA, I'm referring to the 32-bar song form that so many jazz standards follow. This is a much longer form than where we've played so far. Most of what we've done so far has been either an 8-bar form or a 16-bar form.

Now we've got:

• Twice as long
• A bridge

Chord Structure

Looking at the chords of Take the A Train, you can see that:

• The first eight bars are in C.
• We have a perfect cadence in bars 6 and 7: G7 to C.

That in itself is a massive signal that we're in the key of C. It also ends on G7, sending us back to C again.

The A section, which I've called A1, is repeated (that's the second A). It has a different ending because it takes us to the bridge, sometimes called the middle section or the B section. This starts with an F chord for four bars.

It feels like, because we've got a C7 in front of that leading us to F, it sounds like we've changed key to the key of F. This is another feature of most jazz tunes, they don't always stay in the same key for the whole tune.

Here, we've got a modulation from C to F to the IV chord. We don't stay there very long because at the end of the bridge, the G7 sends us back to C again for the last 8 bars (A3). This finishes with another turnaround that sends you back to the beginning again.

Ending the Tune

If you were going to finish the tune, you would finish on bar 31 with a C chord. You wouldn't do the C, A7, D minor, G7. In fact, in our tune, we're going to have a sort of classic ending which will sound like this.

There's also an intro which we'll talk about later.

Left Hand Technique

Let's get stuck in first of all with the left hand. We're going to follow the chords and just play a two-feel bass.

Easiest Way to Play a Two Feel:

• Play root and fifth.

For example:

1. Two bars of C could be this:
   1, 2, 3, 4.
   1, 2, 3, 4.

However, there's no reason why you shouldn't play C at the top as well. This is one really common hand position that is useful to know for any chord octave roots with the fifth in the middle. Remember, we did that for Green Dolphin Street.

Now in C, and then you'd move to D and so on. Go through the sequence.

Varying the Bass Line

If you have two bars on a chord and it's going to come back at least three times in every chorus (every time you have 32 bars), you're going to be playing that same thing again. It doesn't make sense to play it the same way every time.

Bass line can be varied in the same way that you take variations when you play an improvised solo. However, you've still got to play C at the beginning of the bar.

Here's another hand position I would suggest you get comfortable with:

• Root in the middle, fifth on top and bottom.

We can do that on D, and then we're onto the D minor.

Finger Positioning

The third hand position I've used in this arrangement is to start with the thumb on the root and to go down to the fifth and the root.

Although these three configurations all use the same notes (just using C and G), they're very simple. It's crucial that you should be able to finger them correctly.

Key Notes:

• If you start with the little finger on the root all the time, you're never going to play any notes below. You're stitching yourself up before you start.
• In order to leave open the possibility of going down, you need to start at least with the third finger, sometimes the thumb, if you're planning to go down.

You'll notice that the A sections in this arrangement each have their own bassline. You don't have to just read them off the page. It's important that you understand all the variations that I've included in the left hand.