The 12 bar blues chord progression is the foundation of blues rhythm guitar. This progression is used in countless blues songs so if you want to play blues guitar you’d better learn it. This lesson shows you the basic 12 bar blues progression and three common variations you can play in any key.

Blues chord progressions most often use dominant chords which are a standard major chord with an added flatted 7th note, this note is found two frets below the chord’s root. Twelve bar blues chord progressions use three dominant chords, these are the I, IV and V chords of the song’s key. Here are some examples.

• In the key of E the I, IV, V chords are E, A, B.
• In the key of A the I, IV, V chords are A, D, E.
• In the key of G the I, IV, V chords are G, C, D.

Dominant chords can often be played on the guitar by removing one finger that plays the root note of the chord to play the dominant 7th note two frets below it. You can see this in the E7 and A7 chord shapes below.

E7 and A7 chord diagrams

Get the idea? Good, now let’s take a look at the 12 bar blues progression using those chords. Below is the chord grid.

12 Bar Blues in E Major

You can see that the progression starts with four bars of the I chord, in this example E7. This is followed by two bars of the IV chord, A7, then another two bars on the I, E7. The last four bars are referred to as the turnaround and use one bar on the V chord, one bar on the IV and finally two bars on the I chord.

The progression then starts back at the I chord in the first of the twelve bars again. It’s easy to see where the progression gets its name, it has 12 bars which are repeated for the length of a song.

The 12 bar blues progression is the foundation of countless blues songs. You will easily learn to recognize it if you listen to plenty of blues songs and pay attention to the sound of the chords as they go by.

There are two very common variations to the basic 12 bar form that we’re going to take a short look at here. You should learn these two variations to play more popular blues songs or if you want to participate in blues jams with other musicians.

The first variation involves a change in bar two of the 12 bar blues, you play the IV chord in place of the I chord to give the progression shown below.

12 Bar Blues Variant 1

The second variation replaces the I chord in the twelfth bar with a V chord. Play this variation and I’m sure you’ll instantly recognize it. It is a characteristic blues sound you have heard in countless blues performances, it relaunches the song into the next round of 12 bars.

12 Bar Blues Variant 2

Now you’ve learned the two variations separately, you should also practice playing the 12 bar blues progression with both variations: play the IV chord in bar two and the five chord in bar twelve. That gives you four 12 bar blues chord progressions to practice, let’s recap them here:

1. The basic 12 bar blues progression
2. IV chord in bar 2 variation
3. V chord in bar 12 variation
4. IV and V chord variation

Learn and memorize these four 12 bar blues progressions on your guitar and you will be well on your way to playing blues rhythm guitar. Learn and practice the progressions in as many keys as you can and you’ll be amazed how many blues songs you can play. Time to pick up your guitar and start practicing…

This article for beginner guitar players shows how to play the 12 bar blues progression with easy open position blues chords.

Blues guitar is great fun to play and is the basis of musical styles like rock, soul, R&b, funk and jazz. Learning to play the blues gives you valuable skills that will help you learn many other styles.

Yet the heart of the blues can be learned with only the few simple chords and the basic blues song structure shown in this lesson. Ready? OK, let’s take those first steps towards playing thousands of blues songs…

Blues Chords

Blues guitar uses distinctive sounding chords called dominant 7th chords. These are denoted by the number 7 following the chord name, e.g. E7 denotes a dominant 7th E chord.

The dominant 7th chord is simply a normal major or minor chord with a 7th note two frets below the root note added. For example, you add a D note to an E major chord to form an E7, a G note to an A chord gives you A7, and so on.

You can add the 7th note to many chord positions by finding the root note and changing the fingering to play the note two frets below it. The chord diagrams below show you easy open blues chords in the key of A major.

E7            A7                D7
e 0|---|---|  0|---|---|---|    |---|-3-|
B 0|---|---|   |---|-2-|---|    |-1-|---|
G  |-1-|---|  0|---|---|---|    |---|-2-|
D 0|---|---|   |---|-1-|---|   0|---|---|
A  |---|-2-|  0|---|---|---|   x|---|---|
E 0|---|---|  x|---|---|---|   x|---|---|

You can try to find the dominant 7th note for other open chords you know. Simply find a string where the root note occurs and change fingering to play the note two frets lower on that string. Remember that the root note occurs two or even three times in open chord forms.

Alternatively, you can find a string where the 5th note of the chord occurs and play the note three frets up from it.

Now you know how to play simple blues chords in open positions let’s look at how they are used in songs.

12 Bar Blues Progression

Most blues songs use a 12 bar chord progression that is quite easy to learn. Once you master this progression you’ll be able to play about 90% of blues songs with it.

The blues progression uses chords based on the first, fourth and fifth scale degrees. These are commonly known as the I, IV and V chords. Here is the 12 bar blues progression in the key of A major, the I, IV, V chords are A7, D7 and E7 respectively.

|  A7  |  X  |  X  |  X  |  D7  |  X  |
|  A7  |  X  | E7  | D7  |  A7  | E7  |

As you learn and memorize this progression you should aim to memorize the chord changes in terms of I, IV and V chords. If you do this then it will be easy to play the blues in a variety of keys.

You can play the blues in four popular keys – A, E, D and G – with only five chords. The table below shows the I, IV and V chords for these four major keys commonly played on the guitar.

Key of E: E7 (I), A7 (IV), B7 (V)
Key of A: A7 (I), D7 (IV), E7 (V)
Key of D: D7 (I), G7 (IV), A7 (V)
Key of G: G7 (I), C7 (IV), D7 (V)

Practice the chord forms one key at a time and memorize the 12 bar blues progression. With these two simple pieces of knowledge you can have fun playing along to many blues songs or join in at your local blues jam.