The 12-bar blues is one of the most popular chord progressions in popular music, including the blues. The blues progression has a distinctive form in lyrics and phrase and chord structure and duration. It is, at its most basic, based on the I-IV-V chords of a key.
What does this mean? The table shows the notes in the keys of C, G and A. It shouldn’t be hard for you to work out the other keys.
Key |
I |
II |
III |
IV |
V |
VI |
VII |
VIII |
C |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
A |
B |
C |
G |
G |
D |
E |
F |
A |
B |
C |
D |
A |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
A |
A D
The root chord is also known as chord I. If we use the Key of A as our example the chords I IV and V are A, D and E., however for ease of playing we will use E7
OK, we have our 3 chords.
We are playing 12 bars, each bar has 4 beats. Now we need the pattern of what chords to play when. The diagram below sets it out…it looks more complex than it is. I’ll go through it below.
Here’s an explanation: You can effectively ignore the horizontal lines signifying what notes to play but I have included it as it is a standard way of representing music.
Each row represents four bars – see the vertical dividers between bars? Note over the tree rows they are numbered 1 – 4, 5 – 8 and 9 – 12. That’s our 12 bars.
Each bar has four beats in it represented by the diagonal line. So, taking a single row, four bars has 16 beats (four bars x 4 beats each). Think of a metronome clicking 16 times and you have just heard the top row…or first four bars.
Still with me? Good.
Now we need to know what chords to play when. The Roman numeral above each bar indicates which chord to play (refer back to the first table). Remember, since we are playing in A we have A (I), D (IV) and E7 (V). So our pattern is actually
A |
A |
A |
A |
D |
D |
A |
A |
E7 |
E7 |
A |
A |
Too easy!
So, what can you do with this? Hear Taj Mahal's amazing The Celebrated Walkin' Blues. It's our basic 12 bar blues but done in a way I can only dream of.
