What makes the 12 bar blues a staple in modern music?

Whether you enjoy blues music or not, its wide influence makes the 12 bar blues a form that has influenced pretty much anything you listen to.

What is the 12 bar blues?

The 12 bar blues is a musical structure defined by a chord progression that lasts for 12 measures or musical bars. The progression traditionally consists of three chords (though it could include more), most typically the first, fourth, and fifth chords of a major key.

The progression starts with four measures of the one chord. These are followed by two measures of the four chord and then another two measures of the one chord. The last four measures can vary, but a simple form includes two bars of the five chord and two final bars of the one chord. This pattern often repeats throughout the entire song. Other times, the pattern is used in just certain portions of the song. You’ll also often hear modified versions of it.

It’s the wide use of this progression in blues music that gives the structure its name. And it also explains what makes the 12 bar blues a staple in modern music. Musical genres such as early rock and roll, R&B, country, folk, and many others also use the 12 bar blues structure.

Whether these genres inherited the structure from the blues probably causes plenty of debate. While other genres have largely evolved beyond this basic structure, they are still largely rooted in it. This is what makes the root, fourth, and fifth chords a key most commonly included in so much popular music even today.

How to play the 12 bar blues

Its basic simplicity makes the 12 bar blues a very valuable tool for you to understand. Depending upon the genre you play, you may use this form hundreds of times. It works for any major key, and in fact, a minor version works just as well for any minor key.

Let’s look at a 12 bar blues in the key of E. The root chord is obviously E. A takes its place as the IV chord. And you play B as the V.

In most cases, it works best to replace the V chord with the diminished 7th (V7). This holds especially true in the key of E–arguably the key of the blues. So instead of B major, play the B dominant 7th. So your three chords are E, A, and B7.

You can break the progression into three distinct parts, each four bars long. Start with four measures of E. Try to give your strumming a blues feel. Get into it.

You’ll split the next four bars into two halves. For the first half, play two measures of A. Follow those with two measures back on E.

The final four bars give you some freedom for a bit of variety. As I said above, the easiest form might be to play two bars of B7 and finish things up with two bars of E.

Once you’ve gone through this entire pattern of 12 bars, repeat the progression as many times as you need to in order to finish the song.

Playing 12 bar blues turnarounds

Let’s talk about those last four measures. As I said, you have some flexibility to add a bit of variation there. The way you played those bars above–two measures of V7 followed by two measures of the root–might be referred to as playing it straight.

You can add some excitement to the progression if you play some sort of turnaround.

What is a turnaround?

A turnaround is a short chord change or pattern of changes in music (especially a 12-bar blues progression) that sets up a bit of tension and leads the listener back to the beginning of the next 12 bars.

For instance, you could play two bars of the B7. Then you can follow that with one bar of the E and one more bar of B7. That last measure of B7 sets up the tension that turns the listener back around to the E that starts the next 12 bars.

Another common turnaround breaks the last four bars up into four different chords, each of which lasts for one measure.

To play this turnaround, play the B7 for one bar. Then switch to the A for one bar. Next, back to the root for one bar. And finally back to the B7 for the turnaround to the E that starts the next 12 bars.

Dominant 7ths are always appropriate in the blues

So far we talked about the dominant 7th of the V chord. That’s why in our example above we played B7 instead of B major. But the dominant 7th can be used with any of the three chords. That’s especially appropriate with the blues. The blues love dominant 7 chords.

Let’s keep it simple with a slight modification of the last turnaround we just played. There we played the final four bars as one bar each of B7, A, E, and B7. Try that turnaround again, but this time replace the A with A7. This adds a very cool flair to the turnaround which now contains three measure of dominant 7ths.

Another cool possibility involves replacing the last bar of a chord with the dominant 7th of the chord you’re on.

For instance, start with three bars of E. Then, switch to E7 for the fourth bar.

That leads nicely into the next four bars where you’ll play one bar of A, one of A7, one of E, and one more of E7.

And that leads into the turnaround of your choice for the final four bars.

The 12 bar blues: a wellspring of creativity

You might be tempted to think the 12 bar blues a very restrictive construct that would get old after a while. After all, how many different songs can be written in a single form? As it turns out, thousands. Probably millions.

And as I said, it’s not just the blues that uses the form. Tons of songs in other genres use the same structure. Below are several non-blues examples that you might have heard of from a variety of periods and genres. Many of them uses a straight 12 bar blues progression throughout or in part (like the verses). Others use a modified version of the progression. And though some might use more than three chords, they still stick close to the structure of 12 bar blues.

• “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton covered by Elvis Presley
• “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin
• “Rock Around the Clock” by Billy Haley and the Comets
• “Tush” by ZZ Top
• “Birthday” by The Beatles
• “Two of a Kind Working on a Full House” by Garth Brookes
• “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” by the Andrews Sisters
• “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen
• “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry
• “Spiderman Theme Song” by Bob Harris and Paul Francis Webster
• “Black or White” by Michael Jackson
• “Faith” by George Micheal
• “Let’s Stick Together” by Bryan Ferry
• “Boogie Shoes” by KC and the Sunshine Band
• “I Got You (I Feel Good)” by James Brown
• “Something Like Olivia” by John Mayer
• “Give me One Reason” by Tracy Chapman
• “Red House” by Jimi Hendrix
• “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by U2
• “Kiss” by Prince

Conclusion

It’s an amazing amount of versatility that makes the 12 bar blues a staple in modern music. Thousands, if not millions, of songs have been written with this chord progression structure.

Typical blues songs use just three chords–the root, IV, and V chords–throughout the progression. While the form is pretty standardized, the last four measures of the cycle allow for some flexibility. You can vary the pattern with different turnarounds in those last four bars.

Dominant 7th chords also play an important role in the blues and other genres that use the 12 bar blues pattern. You can add dominant 7th chords in various places throughout the pattern to add further interest to your song. This works especially well on the V chord.

Many songs in various genres use the 12 bar blues structure and it’s proven to be incredibly flexible and versatile.