Walking Bass Line – Take The A Train
In this masterclass we’re going to create a bass line over the song Take The A Train by Billy Strayhorn, also known as the signature song for The Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Walking bass lines are a fascinating and important part of jazz as they create the foundation for the harmony underneath the chords and melody. They can easily change the colour of any chord by, for example, playing the 3rd in the bass instead of the root.
Walking bass lines are a great tool for piano players and other instrumentalists. You can use this or any other bass line for playing solo piano, learning different songs with a similar harmonic structure, and for practicing solos. Take The A Train is a great song to learn to play bass lines over, as its sections are harmonically very similar to hundreds of other songs.
I would recommend that you listen to the great bass players and compose your own walking bass lines over songs you’re working on. Bass players who I would highly recommend to check out are Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Sam Jones, Percy Heath and Jimmy Garrison. The bass line we’re going to create in this lesson is a combination of several bass lines I have transcribed from the bass players mentioned above.
Lesson Downloads
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Bass line – Take The A Train lesson notation File Type: pdf
Related Lessons
The secondary dominant, or 5 of 5, is one of the fundamental extensions of the basic 2-5-1 progression in jazz harmony.
We discuss some important principles for creating a simple walking bass line and then apply the principles in the context of 251 progressions.
Tritone Substitution is a useful reharmonisation technique that can be used to add harmonic interest and variety to a chord progression.
Practice Tips
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Take The A Train is almost always played in the key of C but for the purpose of expanding your walking bass line knowledge try playing it in different keys as well. Start with the nearby keys of F and Bb before moving further away.
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Tuomo covers many of the key principles of creating a walking bass line. Take note of these and see if you can improvise a bass line through Take The A Train.
- Similarly, using the principles explained by Tuomo, try moving away from Take The A Train and creating bass lines for other tunes you know.
