When is a 12 Bar Blues not a 12 Bar Blues?? When someone changed some of the chords... huh, it's still a 12 Bar Blues... well nevermind.

So even though there is a kinda set "12 Bar" chord sequence, there are many variations of it that are commonly used. Most times songs will stick to a certain sequence that works best wth the vibe or melody, so it's worth knowing the most common variations.

Video Lesson

 

Backing Track

Here is the Blues in D Backing track for you to practice with! You'll probably want to use the chart below to make sure you are getting the correct variations - we're using a "Quick Change", a "I-IV Climb" and a Turnaround ending (more on these in a later lesson!).

Blues Rhythm Track 3 by justinguitar

You can download the 13 track set of mp3's for this series for £5 (approx $8) (Blues Rhythm Guitar Mp3) - they are also included on the Blues Rhythm Guitar DVD for £15 (approx $25) of this series which comes 3 bonus lessons (44 minutes worth!) and a pdf booklet.

Chart

Extras

There are many variations and of course we've only used a few here for the backing track or it would have just sounded silly! So just to run through the ones looked at in the video:

• Quick Change(change to the IV chord for Bar 2)
• Long V (staying on V for bars 9 and 10)
• Long I (staying on the I for bars 11 and 12)
• I to IV climb up (starts with tone, I, II, bIII, III)
• Turnaround IV to V climb (as used in the backing track)
• Turnaround b3, 2 b2 chromatic (we re-visit this one a later lesson on Turnarounds)

And there are some otehr not covered in the lesson too which include:

• V to IV 1st inversion (commonly used in bar 10 is V chord in 1st inversion, which males the bass go up a tone from the IV chord. Very cool, I love the sound of this).
• II to V in bars 9/10 (Rather than going V to IV, it can go II to V)
• The VI7 in bar 8 (often used with the above to preceed the II-V, kinda trad jazz sound).

 

HELP!!!!

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