Some of you said you have trouble finding beginner songs. Remember that every song with a standard 12-bar blues progression is potentially a beginner song, since they all use the same three basic chords (although in different keys).
Twelve bar blues – the basics
You’ve heard of it, and as a beginner maybe you’ve played it. It’s one sequence that’s so well known, it’s a starting point for many a jam between musicians, especially those who have not played together before. Everyone knows how the chord progression goes, and it just repeats over and over, so you can forget worrying about learning the chords and concentrate on your rhythms and solos. If you’re an early beginner, you can at least play along, provided it’s in an accessible key, simply adding a rhythm figure by playing the chords in time. It’ll get those chord changes happening, if nothing else. Here is the basic 12-bar blues in the key of A:
(1) |:A |A |A |A |D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |E7 :|
repeat again and again
The above is for the eager beavers who just want to grab the progression and run off to play it. For the rest of you, twelve-bar blues is popular partly because it’s easy, partly because it’s very widely used and partly because it lends itself to a wide variety of interpretations. The melodic variety generated by a single chord sequence is surprising, and the best blues musicians, like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Mayall, find different rhythms, guitar styles, arrangements and melodic inventions from song to song, so it can take a moment, unless you’re listening for it, to realise that a particular song is simply another 12-bar blues. John Lennon’s Ballad of John & Oko (“you know it ain’t easy…” etc) is one of the more obvious examples of a 12-bar blues in a popular song. Less obvious is Donovan’s Sunshine Superman (although this is a slight variation on the standard progression because it starts on a seventh rather than a major chord). The Beatles’ “Get Back” is also a variation on a 12-bar blues (but without the characteristic one-chord-change-per-bar ending sequence that tends to give the 12-bar blues much of its flavour). Their “Come Together” is another altered blues progression.
Twelve-bar blues is easy to play because it uses just three chords -- the three most important chords in any key. What follows is true whether you’re playing blues, or jazz or rock. These three chords have fancy names, but the most useful way to think of them is as the first chord (also called the root or tonic chord), the fourth chord and the fifth chord in any key. For example, in the key of C these chords are C (first chord), F (fourth chord) and G (fifth chord). In every key, the notes are numbered from 1 (C in the key of C) to 7 (B in the key of C) with note number eight being an octave higher than the start (the next highest C).
(1)C (2)D (3)E (4)F (5)G (6)A (7)B (8)C
The chords built on these notes are given roman numerals, so the first chord in any key is a I, the fourth chord is IV and the fifth chord is V. You can add variations after the big roman number, so in C if you want Dm7 you can specify ii7, the small roman numerals representing a minor chord and the 7 denoting the 7th chord. The II chord, built on the D note, is usually played as Dm (D minor) in the key of C, and is sometimes written ii. It can also be played as a major chord (D major) in this key, in which case it would be written as just II. The V chord in C is often played as G7, written V7.
Since A is a common blues key (other widely used ones are E and G, though you can find examples in almost any key) and the chords are easy, we’ll start with a blues in A. If you don’t know the song (Lucille), you might like to try to acquire a recording of it. If you want to start without knowing the song, just practise the chord progression as given below.
We’ll assume you know how to play the chords A, D and E7. In this key, the key of A, the first (I) chord is A, the D is the fourth (IV) and the E is the fifth (V). In the standard blues progression, the fifth chord is usually replaced by V7, in this case E7.
The 12-bars blues is in 4/4, that is, four beats to the bar. In the blues progression already given, start by playing one bar of A. Count with the emphasis on the first and third beats: *one* two *three* four. Here is the progression again, in the key of A and in roman numeral notation. The colon (
means “repeat”. The % symbol is used here for the symbol that normally represents the instruction “stay on the same chord as in the previous bar”. The proper symbol, which is unavailable, looks a bit like a percentage symbol.
(1) |:A |A |A |A |D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |E7 :|
|: I | % | %| %| IV | % | I | %| V7 | IV | I | V7 :|
Play each chord four times (for the four beats of each bar) for each of the bars bounded by the bar symbols, so |A |A |A |A | means play four bars of A. In chord charts like this, that are marked out in bars, sometimes a repeat symbol that looks a bit like a percentage sign (used here in absence of the correct symbol) is used to indicate a bar with the same chord or chord sequence as the previous one, so |A |% | % | % | also means play four bars of A. Sometimes a slash (/) is used to signal another beat within a bar using the same chord as before, so
|A / / / | A / / / | means play two bars of A in 4/4 time. A sign that looks like |: says “begin repeat from here” and means you play until you get to another sign that looks like :| meaning “end repeat”, then you go back to the |: and play again (repeat only once unless otherwise indicated).
After the initial 4 bars of A in the standard 12-bar progression there are two bars each of D and A in the same manner. For the next four bars there is a chord change every bar, and it is this sequence that makes a 12-bar blues most easily recognised.
Here is an example of a song using the 12-bar blues in A. If the chords don’t seem to line up with the words, copy and paste the song into a word processing file and change the font to 10 point Courier or 10 point Courier New. Note that the first bar of the 12-bar sequence actually starts on the second syllable of the word Lucille. This means you need either an opening bar (of A) in which the first syllable of Lucille will fall on the fourth beat of that bar, or, what is more common, an intro, which can be a full 12-bar sequence with the song starting on the last beat of the last bar before the 12-bar pattern starts again, or a shorter sequence such as the last four bars of the 12-bar pattern.
Lucille
Words after The Beatles 1963 (BBC live sessions, recording in key of C, capo 3 to play along)
Collins/Penniman (Little Richard)
|A | % | % | %
|D | % | A | %
|E7 |D | A | E7
(Change in melody and timing for the first two lines of following verse)
|A | % | % | %
I
|A | % | % | %
|D | % | A | %
|E7 |D | A | E7
Variations on the pattern
Variations on the basic blues progression abound. The simplest is one which substitutes a seventh chord at the end of the initial four-bar A sequence, giving:
(2) |:A |A |A |A7 |D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |E7 :|
Try replacing the A with the A7 in the fourth bar when playing Lucille and notice the difference it makes, adding a little more flavor to the sequence.
The following familiar song uses a lengthened 12-bar blues progression, adding an extra four bars of A at the start of the song to give a 16-bar sequence:
(3) |:A |A |A |A | A |A |A |A |
D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |E7 :|
Walkin’ the Dog uses this chord pattern in the key of A. The Rolling Stones recorded it (in the key of A), as did Rufus Thomas (in Eb).
Walkin’ the Dog
Rufus Thomas/Rolling Stones
|A | % | % | %
1
|A | % | % | %
|D | % | A
| E7
| D | A | E7 |
Another very common variation is to replace the turnaround E7 chord in the last bar with another bar of A, giving:
(4) |:A |A |A |A |D |D |A |A |E7 |D |A |A :|
Quite a few Elvis Presley songs used the 12-bar blues pattern, including Hound Dog, which, like Blue Suede Shoes, uses pattern 4:
Little Red Rooster
Willy Dixon’s classic Little Red Rooster, covered by the Stones but originally a black rhythm and blues number, creatively varies the pattern by beginning the vocal after the first four bars (the vocal doesn’t start until the first chord change in the pattern). A second sequence with two bars of D followed by 3 bars of A is added for the second line of the verse, and the pattern then reverts to its usual ending, giving a total of 16 bars (slower bars than in many blues songs):
A | A | A | A | D / / /|
D / / / | A / / / | A |
| D / / /|
[font="] /FONT]
D / / / | A / / / | A | A |
E7 | D / / / |A / / / |
Other keys
So far we have used the key of A to illustrate, but it’s even more common to find 12-bar blues progressions in the key of E, and other common keys are D, G, C and Bb. Occasionally you find Eb and others.
Once you’re familiar with the progression, try it in the other keys with the same songs until you find a key that’s perfect for your vocal range.
Key of E E (I) A (IV) B (V) or B7 (V7)
Key of G G (I) C (IV) D (V) or D7 (V7)
Key of C C (I) F (IV) G (V) or G7 (V7)
Key of D D (I) G (IV) A (V) or A7 (V7)
