12-Bar Blues

Hello and welcome back I'm Joseph Hoffman,
and in this lesson we're going to learn how to play a very common form used in jazz called 12 Bar Blues.
12 Bar Blues is a kind of tradition in popular music that has been around for over a hundred years.
In a nutshell, 12 Bar Blues is a twelve measure long repeating chord progression that appears literally in hundreds if not probably thousands of popular songs in the genres of blues, jazz, or rock.
It's also used as a form for improvising.
Today, we'll explore some ways you can play the 12 Bar Blues so you can join in this rich musical tradition.
Let's come to the piano to get started.
You may recall that a bar is simply another name for measure.
A bar and measure two words that mean the same thing.
So when we talk about 12 Bar Blues, we're talking about twelve measures with a set chord progression pattern,
which you can see right here on your screen.
Let's look at these four measures at a time.
In the first four measures of 12 Bar Blues, we have only the I chord,
and let's use the key of D for our 12 Bar Blues today.
So we'll be using the D blues.
All right, so with your left hand go ahead and let's find a I chord and we'll just use an open V for right now.
Okay, kind of this power chord.
So try that with me, and let's just make each bar 4 beats. So let's count 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4. What chord do you see next?
That's right, now we have a IV chord, so we count up one, two, three, four.
In the key of D, the IV chord would be a G chord.
Again, let's just use an open V G chord, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4,
and then back to a I chord: 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4,
and then what do we get?
A V chord.
So find that on your piano. One, two, three, four, five.
It can be here, an A chord, a 1 2 3 4, then to a IV chord, 1 2 3 4, then back to the I chord 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4, and then that repeats over and over again throughout the improvisation or song, you know, however you're using the 12 Bar Blues.
Okay, let's try this together now without stopping. I'd like you to count out loud and just play these power chords.
Alright, here we go: 1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4,
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4,
1 2 IV chord, 1 2 3 back to the I chord, 2 3 4, 1 2 3 up to the V chord,
3 4, the IV chord, 2 3 4, the I chord 2 3 4
the I chord, 2 3 4. Good!
Pretty straightforward, right?
Now I have a challenge for you.
That's to pause the video and try doing just these very simple whole note chords in your left hand
while you improvise a little right-hand melody.
Okay, I was just messing around making that up as I went.
I'm no jazz expert, but
you can just mess around in the D blues scale, and play these power chords using the 12 Bar Blues, and hey it sounds
pretty exciting and fun.
So pause the video and try out this 12 Bar Blues pattern in your left hand while your right hand is just, again if you're feeling uncomfortable,
just stick with two or three notes,
and see what you can do, and then press play and I'll show you some other patterns you can do with your left hand.
Now in jazz and blues, a lot of different left-hand patterns have
been used over the many decades.
The many years of jazz. Okay, this is one of them where you just take that open fifth and you alternate it with a sixth.
Back and forth you keep that bottom note, that root of the chord, the same. So we have I chord, the I chord,
the I chord,
the I chord, then up to the IV chord.
The IV chord,
back to the I chord, the I chord,
Now to the V chord, notice I had to use that F-sharp there, why, because we're in the key of D.
So if I did this, that doesn't quite sound right. We need that F-sharp.
Back to the I chord, okay?
So that's one option.
Pause the video
and give that option a try. Don't worry about adding in a right-hand part unless you really want to
challenge yourself, but the first time you're probably just going to play through that left-hand accompaniment.
Remember, you can always find a friend to improvise and jam with you playing the
the melody part while you do the accompaniment.
Eventually you'll be able to do that hands together no problem, but you know at first maybe you want to just focus on the chords
while someone else is improvising that melody.
Okay, pause the video to try this accompaniment pattern, then press play and I'll show you a few other options too.
Here's the pattern that I used in our improvisation from our previous lesson on D blues.
I go D, then up the octave, then I come down a whole step,
and then down this third here. So up an octave, down a second, down a third, then back down to D.
See that makes a really cool sounding bass line.
So that's my I chord, then what would I do for the IV chord? I take that same pattern and transpose it up to G.
G, down a step, down a ...