Blues Guitar Chords: The 12 Bar Blues Progression

On top of being essential to playing the blues, it is also one of the most popular techniques for building a strong foundation of playing and learning theory.  This is why there are so many people trying to write lessons on the topic and unfortunately why there are so many bad free online guitar lessons out there.

Basically, at its core it is a chord progression that is comprised of 12 measures. The chords that make up these measures are simple repeated for the length of the song in a continuous 12 measure progression.  For those of you who don't know, a measure translates to the same thing as a bar. In the blues, three primary blues guitar chords make up the entire 12 chord progression.

There are slight variations that can be played with this progression and many players develop their own variation. Now that you know what it is, it's just a matter of how to put it to use.

Now that we know this, we must learn the formula that is used to play these chords within the 12 measures or bars. The formula is actually quite simple. Think of the 12 measures being separated into three sections of the progression, this is by far the easiest way of learning the 12 bar chord progression and putting the primary blues guitar chords to use.

Now that we have broken the 12 measures into three parts of four measures each, we will learn what chords to play where. Remember the notes that you are playing will change depending on what key you transpose the progression to.

For this example we will be playing in the key of C. In the first four measures, or the first section, we will play C, C, C, C, holding the same chord for all four bars.

In the second four measures, we will play F, F, C, and C. Finally, in the third and final four measures of the 12 chord progression, we will play G, F, C, and C.

Its important to remember that this is just the standard formula. Often blues players will experiment and create variations that you find in an online guitar lesson.

This is why it is important to experiment with the knowledge that you gain with blues guitar lessons like these, and also try and incorporate your own ideas.