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12 Bar Blues for Beginners
The 12 bar blues are the famous chord progression in western music. At their most basic the 12 bar blues consists of 3 lines subdivided into four bars. There are 4 beats in each bar.
The most common version of the 12 bar blues chord progression uses the 1st, 4th and 5th chords of the key. If you don’t know what this means it is explained below.
12 Bar Blues in the Key of C.
To do this correctly you will need to be able to play the C major, F major and G major guitar chords and you will have to have a basic understanding of how to form major guitar scales.
Have a look at the C major scale below. The letters are the names of the notes in the scale of C major. The number beside the letter tells you where in the scale the note is. For example C is the first note of the scale, A is the 6th note of the scale and B is the 7th note of the scale.
C (1), D (2), E (3), F (4), G (5), A (6), B (7)
The twelve bar blues uses the 1st, 4th and 5th parts of a scale in the chord progression.
For example in the case of C above:
- The 1st chord will be C because C is the 1st note of the scale above
- The 4th chord will be F because F is the 4th note of the scale above
- The 5th chord will be G because G is the 5th note of the scale above
For the key of C the most common version of the 12 bar blues chord progression will look like this. The guitar strumming pattern below is fairly basic so feel free to change it around if you want.
October 3, 2008 at 2:24 pm | Learn Guitar Chords | 1 comment
[...] To learn the twelve bar blues in A you need to be able to play the A major, D major and E major guitar chords. You’ll also need a basic understanding of guiatr scales. If you’re not up on guitar chords or scales check out the 3 free courses on our sister site – learn guitar [...]