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apparently it’s now time to get rhythmic in my musical journey – 12 Bar blues is one of the most popular “formulas” for chord progression in modern music.  At its most basic it is simply the I, IV and V chords in a key (1, 4, 5).  For example, in the key of G we have the following notes.

So to play 12 Bar Blues in G, we’ll play G, C, D. The basic pattern would be

Or in our case of playing in the key of G, the notes would be.

I am a computer geek by trade, so I like patterns – they make my brain happy so here’s something else that’s nice about 12 Bar Blues on the guitar.  If you play it in basic barre chords the example above would look like this (in it’s most basic, stripped down format).

|-----------|
|-----------|
|-----------|
|-----------|
|--5-5-5-5--|
|--3-3-3-3--|

|-----------|
|-----------|
|-----------|
|--5-5------|
|--3-3-5-5--|
|------3-3--|

|-----------|
|-----------|
|--7-----7--|
|--5-5---5--|
|----3-5----|
|------3----|

Why is that cool?  Because it’s a movable format.  Find any note on the low E string (nice diagram here) and you can use that as your starting note in the key or your I note.  Keep your finger position the same but move the root note down a string to the A string for the IV note.  Then move your hand position up 2 frets and you’ll find your V note.  Pretty cool, very simple.

I recently rented and watched the documentary video It Might Get Loud featuring The Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White – I don’t have words to convey how amazing I felt the experience was.  If you like the guitar or even just like music – this is an inspiring 90 minutes – do yourself a favor and check it out.

This is less of a lesson – more of a stream of consicousness – it took me a while to wrap my head around this lesson – so you, the reader are made to suffer too… sorry about that.

The basis of most western music is the C major scale (also called the Ionian scale)

C D E F G A B C
1  2  3  4  5 6  7 8

Major scales follow the pattern of
Full Step | Full Step | half step | Full Step | Full Step | Full Step | half step | Full Step

Chord formula for Major Chords 1, 3, 5 – so if we take the C scale above and extract the 1, 3 and 5 notes we end up with C E G – the notes that make up a standard C Major chord

A major 7 adds in the 7th note – so for the above example the B is also added bringing the chord to C E G B