Twelve-Bar Blues

Iman Rahimipour

Iman Rahimipour

Musicien, Composer, Instructor

Playing his guitar backstage

Maybe you’ve heard the twelve-bar blues term in many songs, performances, YouTube videos, and so on.
The twelve-bar blues are the most popular chord progression in the blues genre, consisting of 12 bars that follow a chord’s specific order.

In twelve-bar blues, each phrase consists of 12 bars that the soloist can improvise over this phrase over and over. This phrase is known as chorus, and we usually have a turnaround at bar 12 to repeat the section or the phrase.

Twelve-bar blues chord structure:

The most important chords in twelve-bar blues are I, IV, and V chords. The chord I is Tonic, the IV is Subdominant, and the V is Dominant.

Here is a structure of twelve-bar blues:

Twelve bar blues chord turnaround explained

In the image above, you can see that the last chord of the twelve-bar is the V chord, which is a turnaround and gives the audiences an incomplete sense of ending and prepare them to turn back to the beginning of the chord progression ( Incomplete Cadence )

Let's Find The Chords For G Blues

In the G scale, the first chord is G, the fourth is C and the fifth is D. For making a more bluesy sound, we can use the Dominant 7th chord, so we will have G7, C7, D7.

Blues in G - Turnaround - Iman Music Studio

Full Cadence

In this image, you can see that the last bar is the I chord or the Tonic chord, which is a full cadence.

Twelve bar blues chord progression

Twelve Bar Blues in G, Full Cadence

Blues in G - Iman Music Studio

SHARE

Facebook
WhatsApp
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Other Blog Posts

what is twelve-bar blues?
Iman RP

Twelve-Bar Blues

Maybe you’ve heard the twelve-bar blues term in many songs, performances, YouTube videos, and so on.
The twelve-bar blues are the most popular chord progression in the blues genre, consisting of 12 bars that follow a chord’s specific order.

Read More »
music
Iman RP

How to get started with Blues Harp?

The most frequent question that I’ve got asked about blues harp:
How do I have to learn and play the blues harp?
Is it hard to learn blues harp, or it’s easy?
How much daily time do I need to practice?
Is blues harp take too much breath, or is it a breathtaking instrument?
Can I learn blues harp by myself, or I need to take classes?
Is blues harp a powerful instrument to start?
And many similar questions. The point is that you need to start playing this instrument to have a sense of it and what you can do with it. So, the first step is to make your decision and start learning.

Read More »
Music Instructor
Iman RP

How to clean your harmonica

In this crazy moment, it’s very crucial to wash your hands before practicing and also clean your harmonica regularly. In this article, I am going to show you how you can clean your blues harp easily.

Read More »