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12 Bar Blues
100 Tips For Blues Guitar You Should Have Been Told.
Today we have a blues guitar lesson. We are going to learn how to play the most common blues chord progression. It's called 12 bar blues.
The pattern of chords used to play blues is quite simple. The classic blues sound is usually created using only three chords played in a particular progression. This progression is as follows:
- 4 bars of the I chord
- 2 bars of the IV chord
- 2 bars of the I chord
- 1 bar of the V chord
- 1 bar of the IV chord
- 1 bar of the I chord
- 1 bar of the V chord
As you can see, this creates a 12 bar chord progression. If you are unsure what the roman numeral chord symbols refer to, see: Major scale chords.
If we were to play blues in the key of E (key signature - 4 sharps), our I chord would be E, our IV chord would be A, and our V chord would be B. When we play blues we usually make our chords into 7th chords, so in this case we would have an E7, A7 and B7 chord. Our 12 bar blues progression in the key of E would look like this:
| E7 / / / | E7 / / / | E7 / / / | E7 / / / |
| A7 / / / | A7 / / / | E7 / / / | E7 / / / |
| B7 / / / | A7 / / / | E7 / / / | B7 / / / |
This would be strummed using a blues rhythm often called shuffle rhythm. A shuffle rhythm is like a triplet where you strum down on the first beat of the triplet and up on the third. This creates an uneven shuffling type rhythm.
Add a few blues licks to this and before you know it you'll be sounding like B.B. King. Here's an example of 12 bar blues played in E:
The blues video above is courtesy of JamPlay. Visit now to see more lessons.
