12-bar blues: the chord chart, the shuffle and the variations

The shuffle, the power-chord riff and the blues exercises we use are taken from the Hal Leonard Guitar Method – Complete Edition by Will Schmid and Greg Koch. Its 12-bar examples come with full-band recordings, so you hear the form before you play it.

The 12-bar blues is the form behind the blues, early rock and roll and a large part of jazz. It uses three chords in a fixed order over twelve bars, then starts again, so once you know it you can sit in on a blues jam with players you have never met.

This guide gives the 12-bar blues chart bar by bar, the chords in the five keys guitarists use most and the reason the form works. It shows how to play it on guitar with seventh chords, the shuffle feel and the boogie riff. Then it covers the quick change, turnarounds, minor and 8-bar blues, the piano version and the scale to solo with. A songs table and a free printable chart come at the end.

The 12-bar blues is a 12-measure chord progression built on the I, IV and V chords of a key, usually played as dominant seventh chords. It runs four bars of I, two of IV and two of I, then one bar each of V, IV and I, and a last bar of V that turns the form around. In the key of A that is A7 for four bars, D7 for two, A7 for two, then E7, D7, A7 and E7.

The 12-bar blues chart

The roman numerals name each chord by its place in the key. I is built on the first note of the scale, IV on the fourth and V on the fifth. Read the chart as three lines of four bars, with four beats to a bar.

To hear the chart before you play it, open the 12-bar blues in the chord progression player. It loops the twelve bars in any key at the tempo you set, so you can play along from the first try.

The Hal Leonard Guitar Method prints the same form in A as a slash chart, one slash per beat. It writes the chords as plain A, D and E and stays on A in bar 12; the version above puts E7 there to lead back to the top.

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The book’s recording of the chart is a full band playing the twelve bars. Count the bars as it plays and listen for the change to D in bar 5 and to E in bar 9.

The 12-bar blues in other keys

The form stays the same in every key; only the three chords change. Guitarists favor A and E because most of the chords have an open string as their root, which makes the shuffle riff further down easy to play. Each chord in the table opens its fingering in the guitar chord finder.

Why the 12-bar blues works

The twelve bars fall into three lines of four, and a sung blues follows that shape. The singer states a line over the first four bars, repeats it over the next four, and answers it in the last four. The traditional “C.C. Rider” in the Hal Leonard Guitar Method is built this way, and it is the pattern of thousands of blues songs.

The chords follow the same three lines. Line 1 stays home on the I chord. Line 2 moves to IV, which sounds like a step away, then comes back. Line 3 brings the only bar of V, the moment of most tension, in bar 9, and lets it fall back through IV to I. The V in bar 12 is the turnaround: it pulls the ear back to bar 1, so the form can repeat as long as the band wants.

A dominant seventh adds a flat seventh to a major chord, so A7 is A, C♯, E and G. Textbook harmony saves the seventh for the V chord, while the blues plays every chord as a seventh, even the I, and that is a large part of how the form sounds.

How to play the 12-bar blues on guitar

Start with three open seventh chords and play four downstrums in each bar while you count. When the changes come without a pause, add the shuffle feel and then the riff.

The seventh chords in A and E

In A you need A7, D7 and E7; in E you need E7, A7 and B7. The figure shows all five shapes in open position, with the same fingerings as the chord finder.

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The shuffle feel

Most blues is played with a shuffle, also called a swing feel. Each beat still has two eighth notes, but the first lasts about twice as long as the second, so the pair sounds long-short instead of even. Say “1-a 2-a 3-a 4-a” with the “a” late and short. The Hal Leonard Guitar Method explains it with a long-short pair counted as three.

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The strumming hand keeps the same down-up motion as in straight eighths; only the upstroke arrives later. The guide to guitar strumming patterns covers that motion if it is new to you.

The boogie riff

The sound most people call “blues guitar rhythm” is a two-note shuffle on the low strings. For the A chord, play the open A string with the D string at fret 2, then move the fretting finger to fret 4 and back, two strums each. Keep your first finger down at fret 2 and reach with the third. Move the same shape to the low E string for E5 and to the D string for D5. The book’s “Power Chord Shuffle” is an eight-bar exercise that teaches the shape on A5, E5 and D5. The guide to power chords shows these two-note shapes and the movable ones higher up the neck.

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Listen to the recording before you play. The eighth notes are swung, and the band plays the exercise slowly first, then at full tempo.

Once the shape moves cleanly, play it through the 12-bar chart in A. Start with the metronome at 80 BPM and raise it only when every change lands on beat 1.

12-bar blues variations

The basic chart is a starting point. Blues players change a bar here and there, and each change has a name you will hear at a jam.

The quick change

The quick change, or quick four, moves to the IV chord in bar 2 and back to I in bar 3. In A the first line becomes A7, D7, A7, A7. It breaks up the four bars on one chord at the start of the form. When someone calls “quick change” before a song, this is what they mean.

Turnarounds

A turnaround is what happens in bars 11 and 12 to send the band back to bar 1. The simplest is the V chord in bar 12. A common longer one splits the two bars into I, IV, I and V, two beats each. Guitarists often fill the space with a short riff that climbs to the V. “Lost in the Shuffle” in the Hal Leonard Guitar Method is a full 12-bar blues in E built that way. It uses E, A7 and B7 and ends each chorus on B7 with a walking riff into the next one.

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The recording lets you hear the turnaround in context. Listen for the B7 in the last bar and the riff that leads back to E.

Minor blues

A minor blues keeps the twelve bars and puts the I and IV chords in minor: i7 for four bars, iv7 for two, i7 for two, then V7, iv7, i7 and V7. In A minor that is Am7, Dm7 and E7, the V staying a dominant seventh. It sounds darker and slower to settle. You can loop it as the minor 12-bar blues in the player.

8-bar and 16-bar blues

Not every blues is twelve bars. The 8-bar blues runs I7, V7, IV7, IV7, I7, V7, I7, V7, reaching the V chord in bar 2. That gives it a shorter, more song-like shape, and the player has it as the 8-bar blues. A 16-bar blues stretches the form by four bars, most often by staying longer on the I chord, and its exact layout changes from song to song.

Jazz blues

Jazz players keep the twelve bars and fill them with more chords: passing chords that lead into each change, and ii–V moves borrowed from jazz standards. The form underneath is still I, IV and V, which is why a jazz musician and a blues guitarist can share a chorus. The guide to jazz piano for beginners shows the seventh chords those moves are built from.

Each of these feels and forms has its own rhythm parts, intros and endings, and a book that works through them one at a time saves a lot of searching. 12-Bar Blues: The Complete Guide for Guitar by Dave Rubin covers boogie, shuffle and swing feels, Chicago, minor, slow and bebop blues, intros and turnarounds. It is written in notation and tab, with full-band tracks to play along with.

12-bar blues on piano

On the piano the 12-bar blues is usually played in C, with C7, F7 and G7. A simple start is to hold the root of each chord in the left hand, one note per beat, and play the seventh chord in the right hand on beats 2 and 4. When that is steady, replace the left-hand roots with a boogie pattern that rocks between the fifth and the sixth above the root, the same idea as the guitar riff.

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The guide to piano chord progressions covers voicing seventh chords so the changes move smoothly. On bass, start by playing the root of each chord on every beat, then walk between roots with notes from the chord. On a C harmonica the 12-bar blues is played in G, and the guide to blues harmonica and cross harp shows which holes play each chord.

What to play over it: the blues scale

When you want to solo over the 12-bar blues, the blues scale is the usual first choice. It is the minor pentatonic scale with one added note, the flat fifth, often called the blue note. Its formula is 1, ♭3, 4, ♭5, 5 and ♭7. In A that gives A, C, D, E♭, E and G, and one scale fits all three chords of the form.

On guitar, most players learn it first in fifth position, with the first finger at fret 5. The A blues scale in the scale finder plays the notes and shows them on the fretboard. The pentatonic scale guide explains the five-note shape it grows from.

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Soloing is the next step once the rhythm part is steady, and it takes its own technique: bends, vibrato, licks and turnaround phrases. Hal Leonard Guitar Method – Blues Guitar by Greg Koch teaches the lead side step by step through real blues songs, picking up where the chord chart ends.

Famous 12-bar blues songs

Thousands of songs use the form, from Delta blues to rock and roll. The table lists well-known ones by variation, and each title opens guitar sheet music on musescore.com.

Where the 12-bar blues came from

The Hal Leonard Guitar Method traces the blues to African American musicians in the Mississippi Delta in the early 1900s. It calls the 12-bar form the most typical blues. From there the style became part of jazz, country and rock. Early rock and roll took the 12-bar form almost unchanged, which is why the songs in the table span blues, R&B and rock.

Download the 12-bar blues chart

The free printable chart puts the twelve bars in A, E, G, C and D on one page, each key with its three seventh-chord boxes. Keep it on the music stand while you learn the changes in a new key.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the 12-bar blues?

The 12-bar blues is a chord progression twelve bars long that uses the I, IV and V chords of a key, usually as seventh chords. The order is four bars of I, two of IV, two of I, then V, IV, I and V. It repeats for every verse and solo.

What chords are in a 12-bar blues?

Three: the I, IV and V chords of the key, played as dominant sevenths. In A they are A7, D7 and E7; in E, E7, A7 and B7; in G, G7, C7 and D7. A minor blues uses i7, iv7 and V7, so Am7, Dm7 and E7 in A minor.

How many beats are in a 12-bar blues?

In 4/4 time each bar has four beats, so one time through the twelve bars, a chorus, is 48 beats. A song repeats the chorus for each verse and each solo.

What is a quick change in the blues?

A quick change moves to the IV chord in bar 2 and back to I in bar 3, instead of staying on I for the first four bars. In A that makes the first line A7, D7, A7, A7. The rest of the form stays the same.

What is the difference between 12-bar and 16-bar blues?

A 16-bar blues is four bars longer. It usually keeps the same three chords and stretches one part of the form, most often the time on the I chord. The exact layout varies more from song to song than the 12-bar form does.

Loop it, then play along

The 12-bar blues is three chords in a fixed order. Learn A7, D7 and E7, loop the form in the chord progression player and strum along until the changes come without thinking. Then add the shuffle feel and the boogie riff. When that is steady, try the A blues scale over the top.

For the 12-bar in more keys and feels, played over full-band tracks, keep going in the Hal Leonard Guitar Method – Complete Edition.