Hello and welcome to this week’s harmonica lesson where I am going to teach you the structure of a 12 Bar Blues and how to count through it.
Click here to download lesson resources
Why do you need to know the structure of a 12 bar blues?
It is really useful to know the structure so that you can improvise in a logical manner rather than just trying to throw notes out there and see what sticks. It is also important to know how to tell where you are in the sequence of the 12 bars so that you can start and end in the right place; you don’t want to play over someone else and you don’t want to start to late!
What is the structure?
A standard 12 bar blues is made up of 3 chords. You won’t necessarily be playing these chords on harmonica but it’s useful to know what they are. They are;
I chord (One chord)
IV chord (Four chord)
V chord (Five chord)
For musical notation we use Roman numerals as a convention. You’ll need to get used to it!
This is the order that they come in:
Counting
I want you to practice counting through some famous blues songs while looking at the structure. To do this you will be counting four beats in every bar. To find out where the beat is just feel for where your foot naturally taps.
While counting you are going to pay attention to how many bars have elapsed. This will help you anticipate which chord change is coming next and will help your ear to start to recognise what these chord changes sound like.
Click here to download lesson resources
Thank you
Thank you so much for taking part in this lesson. I hope it was useful for you. If you enjoyed it please feel free to share it with your friends on Facebook and/or Twitter.
If you have any questions just send me a wee email.
Happy harping and see you next Wednesday for the next lesson!
12 Easy 12 Bar Blues Course
If you are serious about taking your harmonica playing to the next level and what some guidance in learning how to make the instrument sound bluesy then my ’12 Easy 12 Bar Blues Course’ is for you.
The course lasts 12 weeks and will introduce a new 12 Bar Blues tune each week for you to learn along with new techniques and theory.
Click here to find out more about it.
Great Tomlin….thank you.
Awesome brother…Ty so much…love your lessons!!…keep up the good work!!
Good day Tomlin
Very interesting – but please may I ask a question.
In the opening you play a really good 12 bar blues.
Are you saying that opening 12 bar blues is played using only the 2 draw, 4 blow and 4 draw?
Regards
Athol Nelson
Nice Job.
Do you have some tabs?
Hi Rafael, I’m afraid I don’t have tabs for what I am playing in the lesson no.
Hi Athol – no the 12 bar example at the beginning has 3 more notes in it than that.
Good on you Sport!
Apart from Whisky, you are the best thing to come out of Scotland!
Another great fundamental lesson………. everything makes more sense now… with the exception of one source of confusion in the word chord. it seems that here the word “chord” is used differently here than other references to it wherein a chord refers to playing 2 or more notes at the same time …i.e. the 123 draw. Could you explain the difference? Thanks!
Hi David, a chord is 3 or more notes played simultaneously. On harmonica we tend to just play the root note of the chord rather than all the notes. But a chord is 3 notes or more. 2 notes are a double stop. Hope that helps. Tomlin