Blues Guitar - The 12 Bar Dejection and More

Most of us who play dejection guitar are accustomed with the 12 bar blues. Almost every dejection guitar amateur has played songs like “Sweet Home Chicago”, “Pride and Joy”, “Red House”, and one of the bags of added dejection songs that use the 12 bar form. What abounding dejection guitar players don’t know, is that there are two added abundant dejection forms to accept from, the 8 bar blues, and the 16 bar blues.

All of the forms use alone three chords, and roman numerals are acclimated to call them. The aboriginal chord, alleged the I chord, is usually a ascendant seventh blazon of ambit that is congenital from the aboriginal agenda in the above scale. If you are in the key of G, afresh G7 will be your I chord. The fourth agenda of a G above calibration is a C, so the next ambit acclimated is alleged the IV ambit and would be C7 in the key of G. The fifth agenda in the G above calibration is D, so the V ambit would be D7. So now you accept your three primary chords, G7, C7, and D7.

The 12 bar dejection is 12 measures long. The appellation bar is just addition chat for measure. The aboriginal bar is consistently the I chord. The additional bar is either the I ambit again, or for a ‘quick change’ blues, it is the IV chord. Confined 3 and 4 are consistently the I ambit again. Confined 5 and 6 will be the IV chord, and confined 7 and 8 will be the I chord. Bar 9 is the V chord, but bar 10 will either be IV or V. Bar 11 is the I chord, and Bar 12 is the V ambit which sets up the adviser for the alpha of the next chorus.

The 8 bar blues, as in the song “Key To The Highway,” aswell starts with a I chord. After that, Bar 2 is the V chord. Confined 3 and 4 accord to the IV chord. Bar 5 is aback to the I chord. Bar 6 is the V. Confined 7 and 8 echo that affect with the I ambit on Bar 7 and the V ambit on bar 8. Once again, the final bar has the V ambit to bureaucracy for the next chorus.

A 16 bar blues, such as the Herbie Hancock tune, “Watermelon Man,” starts like a 12 bar blues. The aboriginal four confined are the I chord. Confined 5 and 6 the IV chord, and confined 7 and 8 acknowledgment to the I chord. Even confined 9 and 10 allotment the V and IV ambit acceptance like the 12 bar blues. The aberration is in that confined 9 and 10 are again 2 added times for Confined 11 – 14. Finally, bar 15 allotment to the I ambit which aswell holds on for bar 16.

As a dejection guitar player, bethink that it’s not that important how you play the chords in a dejection tune. You can play the aforementioned tune with several altered comping styles and get several abundant after-effects for the aforementioned tune. Similarly, if you acquisition a acceptable comping arrangement that you like, don’t be abashed to stick with it for a lot of the tunes that you play. If it works able-bodied in one tune, affairs are it will plan able-bodied in others.