Workshop 9 — “Take the A Train”: Dominant Color, ♯11, Secondary Dominants, and Writing Lines Through Static Harmony

This workshop changes the problem again.

Instead of constantly moving through ii–V packets, we’ll study what happens when the harmony stays in one place long enough that color becomes more important than destination.

“Take the A Train” is perfect for learning:

• dominant chords that do not immediately resolve
• secondary dominants used as color
• ♯11 sound
• Lydian-dominant thinking
• making melody over a chord that lasts several bars
• balancing chord-scale color with actual melodic ideas
• moving between tonic stability and dominant brightness

We’ll work conceptually in C major, which makes the underlying relationships easy to see.