The 12 bar blues is one of the most popular types of chord progression in contemporary music. As the name suggests, it features in blues guitar a great deal, It is also used very commonly in jazz, rock, pop, country and even heavy metal. A 12 bar blues can be played in any key, and there are many variations that can be applied. Playing a 12 bar blues provides scope both for Rhythm Guitar and Lead guitar. Because it is open to so much variation, it can be made extremely simple to play for new guitarists, and then gradually opened up to explore new musical concepts, ideas, types of chords, scales and modes. This, along with the fact that it’s a staple song form for just about every musical genre to feature the electric guitar, makes it a great way to approach learning the electric guitar.
The 12 bar blues is also useful simply because so many other musicians already know it. being one of the first things that most guitarists learn, it’s more or less expected that you’ll be able to play through the basic changes of a 12 bar blues, even if you know nothing else. This means that you will have an extra something to fall back on during impromptu jam sessions and so on. When you’re there holding a guitar with someone and you just look at each other saying “well, what should we play?” it’s an easy and satisfying answer just to say “let’s do a blues in A”. When you’re jamming with other instrumentalists, it leaves a lot of scope for trading solos, as well as giving singers something comfortable to work with.
The basic form of the 12 bar blues contains only 3 chords. It is divided into 3 sections, each four bars long. There are many variations on the 12 bar blues, some more complex than others, but the form of it looks like this:
If these roman numerals don’t make any sense to you just yet, don’t stress. These roman numerals are used to write out chord progressions in a way that is generalised from any particular key. Each numeral indicates the scale degree that forms the root note for each chord. If this also doesn’t make sense to you, again don’t worry.
Here is how to play the basic form of the twelve bar blues in A:
Each box represents one bar of music. You can count through at an even tempo to four for each bar. The chords are just a plain old A major, D major and E major. If you don’t know how to play these chords yet, see my post on how to play your first chords.
Have fun practicing through these chord changes. Take it slow if you have to, and try to get the change between each chord really smooth – it’s better to just go slow and gradual the whole way through than have to slow down or pause so that you can get your fingers in the right spot to get to the next chord. Once you’ve got a grip of this progression then you’ve learnt to play your first 12 bar blues!
