Blues Guitar: 12 Bar Blues

The 12-bar blues is one of the most popular and easiest to learn chord progressions for the guitar. It’s instantly recognizable and great for that all-important guitar solo. Excited yet? Here’s how it’s done:

1. Decide which key you’ll play in (for simplicity’s sake, we’ll start with A)

2. Figure out the I, IV, and V: These roman numerals (1, 4, 5) simply describe a note in relation to the key we’re playing in. So, A would be I. To find IV, we just count up from A: one, two, three, four; A, B, C, D. So D is our IV chord. That would mean that V is E. Note: You can do this in any key. If we play in E, the I, IV, V is E, A, and B, respectively.

3. Learn the progression: Now that we know the chord relationship, we can get to the meat-and-potatoes. Usually in 4/4 time, the progression goes like this (with each “/” mark denoting the end of one measure)

I/I/I/I/IV/IV/I/I/V/IV/I/I/

Get all that?

4. Play it in your key: In the key of A, this progression translates to:

4 measures of A

2 measures of D

2 measures of A

1 measure of E

1 measure of D

2 measures of A

And then start all over again! See how easy it is to play! Also, if you count how many measures we have total, you will find that it’s… 12. Make sense? That’s why they call it 12-bar blues.