| | | Hey Friend,
Hope you all had a great day yesterday. Despite being away from family for the holiday, we had a full-fledged Thanksgiving meal (I even baked a pumpkin pie from scratch!) and played a little bit of Rock Band. It was a good day...
As promised, I wanted to take today's message to answer a question from my buddy Ian over in the UK. Here's what he asked:
"... Me and my jam/practice buddy are doing a blues thing in A7 (that's the A dominant 7 chord). We can do the 12-bar okay but what chords/notes could we use for the ending/turnaround as we can't end it! Haha, it just goes on till someone just stops in mid flow..."
So first let's make sure everyone knows what he's talking about when he says 12 bar...
12-bar Blues typically use three chords, and those are usually dominant 7 chords. Besides major and minor chords, dominant 7 chords are the most common types of chords seen in Rock and Blues. This video intro is a nice example of 12-bar Blues.
There's a specific pattern of three chords in 12-bar Blues - the first chord in the key your playing, the fourth and the fifth. The details of how all this works I'll cover extensively in the upcoming Chords Course. For now, just understand that when we're playing 12-bar Blues, we're going to primarily use three chords.
For example, Ian says he's playing in the key of A major. I know this because he's starting with the A7 chord. The other two chords he's using are the D7 and E7 chords.
The progression (the chord order for 12-bar Blues) is broken down into three sections (four bars each). The first section is four bars of A7. Then you play two bars of D7 and two bars of A7 for the second section. Finally in the third section, play one bar each of E7, D7, A7 and E7. Rinse and repeat.
12-bar Blues is pretty straightforward and great for jam sessions because you can play it over a simple rhythm and easily change the tempo to speed it up or slow it down - it's still going to sound great.
Okay, everyone clear so far? If not, shoot me an email...
So Ian and his friend are having no problem jamming to the basic progression, but the challenge comes when they want to finish out.
One thing I like to do is mix up the last bar with a sliding chord change from D7 to D#7 to E7, finishing with A7 that just hangs there while the lead player riffs with the A minor pentatonic scale. But that's a pretty basic ending/change up.
Another variation might be to play a sliding change from G7 to G#7 to A7 for the last bar. Just so you know, it'll be easiest to use the barre chord forms of these dominant 7 chords.
There's a couple ideas, but here's a question for you, Ian...
What do YOU think would sound good?
This is a great time to put on the old creative cap and try out some ideas. Whenever I need some inspiration, I look to the wisdom of the Ancients... The Beatles.
These four guys were (are) songwriting geniuses, but they learned their chops playing cover songs by their heroes. Many of the early songs they played and recorded were Blues forms including 12-bar. Here's just a few you might recognize:
"Roll Over Beethoven" by Chuck Berry
"Long Tall Sally" by Little Richard
"Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey" by Leiber and Stoller
The Beatles didn't stop there using 12-bar Blues progressions. They wrote at least 15 original songs using this format, including "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Day Tripper." Aaron Krerowicz, who is a full-time professional Beatles scholar (sounds like a very cool job!) lists 27 songs where The Beatles used the 12-bar Blues format.
My suggestion is to listen through a couple of these recordings and analyze how they finished out each song. You can't go wrong by learning a handful of Beatles songs and working out a final chord progression. Joe Walsh once said learning all The Beatles songs was how he started out playing guitar (and he's not only in The Eagles, he's played with members of The Beatles!)
It might seem like a bit of a cop out for me to suggest looking to the masters for ideas, but this is what we do as artists. Picasso said, "Good artists borrow; great artists steal."
The idea is to take something that was done well and make it your own. How can you put your own unique spin on a well-known progression or riff? You need to dig into your creativity and try out different chords and licks until something clicks.
Ian is in a great position because he has a jam buddy - that's a great lesson, too. They can bounce ideas off of each other and try out those ideas to see if they work. One holds down the rhythm guitar while the other takes a lead.
Even if you aren't interested in playing for audiences, having someone to jam with helps you develop timing and your creative chops. There's a fluidity to your playing that comes with learning to jam with other musicians. You can't get that kind of experience with a metronome. Jam tracks come closer to playing with others, but practicing with a live partner is so much better.
As a final word, we have plenty of musical examples available to us to draw inspiration from. It's very easy to find examples of any chord progression you or songwriting format. Just do a little hunting into your own collection of favorite music and you're sure to find something you can use as a template to work out your ideas. And don't be afraid to let yourself go a bit - even though we have a limited palette of notes to work with, you haven't put your twist on them. Get to it!
Peace~
Dave
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