Basics of the 12 Bar Blues Progression
At one time or another you will write or arrange a blues tune. In this lesson, I go through the most basic 12 bar blues progression, to one that is beefed up some harmonically.
This will give you some ideas on how you can alter blues progressions to write more interesting tunes and/or have more to work with when arranging one. If you have any questions, feel free to chime in below the video in the comment section.
Oh, the one thing I did forget to go over is inserting “Bird’s” blues in the first four bars. That is basically moving the first four bars to the 5th bar with some interesting chords. This would be:
F7 | Emi7(b5) A7+7(#9) | Dmi7 G13 | Cmi7 F+7(#9)| Bb7…
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Comments
Hi Jim,
I’ve always loved the blues, in part due to it’s simplicity and straight forwardsness of expression, which at it’s best leaves me with a feeling that finally someone has told the truth in music about something. This was a fun lesson, and I enjoyed all the substitutions and their explanations.
One thing it took me a while to understand simply because no one ever came out and said it: blues using the non functional dominant 7 on the I chord is one of the more radical departures from a lot of other music. I remember a friend trying to explain theory to me and insisting that the I chord can never be a dominant 7 and wondering if I had just misunderstood something.
Maybe a similar lesson sometimes on minor blues, and blues phrasing?
In another vein, I’ve always loved the blues. A while ago I saw Koko Taylor just before she died. She was having trouble during the performance, and I had the thought that the blues are an art form where it’s reasonable that you would get up and charge people money when you are getting too old and sick to perform well, because that’s what the blues are about. It was a wonderful moment.
Dear Jim,
Great basic lesson on the progressions of the Blues. You never stop amazing me with your direct and well explained lesson’s. I ready to start composing some grovvy stuff in the Blues. Philly will never be the same.
Jim: Thanks for the nice comment. There are alot more aspects to the blues (i.e. minor blues, 16 bar blues, Bird’s blues, etc. but I figured that touching on how to go from real basic blues to a more modern jazz type of progression would be something someone may want to know. More hip changes definitely opens up more melodic opportunities. keep us all posted on the progress of your future blues compositions.
Curt: Yes, that is an interesting aspect to the blues – the “tonic” chord is actually a dominant 7th chord. In traditional music theory, the dominant chord functions as the V chord in a key. So in the key of F blues, an F7 would actually be implying a V-I in Bb Major. But the blues doesn’t work that way.
On another note: I worked on a ship years ago and we had a piano player (band leader) that played Major 7ths on blues tunes. It was brutal. Years later I saw that he was Rosie O’Donnell’s piano player and band leader on her show. Just goes to show you that you don’t have to know much about music to be successful in the music business.
Nice lesson Jim but please lose that video program. Its very tedious and detracts from your explanations.
Fred: You’ll see on the site that I have tested different methods for presenting and some have worked better than others. Its all work in progress basically. I’m honing in on the best presentation methods I think to make it easy for everyone, including me. Thanks for the feedback though.
Thank you Jim, I enjoy it very much. Matias, from Argentina