Scott Perry breaks down the 12-bar blues: the I-IV-I-V-I chord progression, the AAB lyrical form where the first line repeats and the third answers it, and how it all works together. He plays "High Heel Sneakers" in A to show how Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Johnny Cash all used the same structure.
Hey gang, Scott Perry here, vintage blues guitarist and founder and creator of guidedguitarlessons.com, with another in the free lesson series Monday Morning Blues. These are short lessons based on answering your questions about the blues itself and how to better play and and improve your blues guitar playing. And I'm really glad you're here. Let's dive right in. Today's question comes from my online student George out in California, and his question is, what is a 12-bar blues? It's a great question. So let's break it down. So the first thing is that all music is made up of just 3 basic elements. You have the underlying rhythm or time feel. This is a part that we respond to in our bodies by tapping our foot, clapping our hands, or dancing. Layered on top of that, we have the harmony or the chords, and then floating over all of that is the melody, the part that we sing, the words that we sing, or the tune that we whistle or hum. Now, all of that, those three elements, have to be organized by being hung on some sort of structure, and we call those song structures. There's a lot of different types of song structures. The 12-bar blues is a really popular one because it's really easy to memorize. So the 12-bar blues song structure employs only 3 chords: the 1, the 4, and the 5 of any given key. And, uh, you can think of the 12-bar blues, I think, most easily as being broken into 3 sections. Each is 4 measures long. In the first section, you have 4 measures of the 1 chord. In the second section of 4 measures, you have 2 measures of the 4, 2 measures of the 1. And then the last section, you have 2 measures of the 5. And 2 measures of the I. Now, there are lots of variations on that, on that form, but that is the essential changes in the essential form. I'll talk about variations maybe in another video. So, the lyrical form of most blues is going to be AAB, and that means that there's a line sung in the first 4 measures that is usually repeated in the second 4 measures, and then the last 4 measures are going to be some sort of response, or is going to somehow wrap up or have a statement of what was repeated in the first two lines. It doesn't always happen that way, but it frequently does in blues itself. And so that kind of song structure and lyrical form is called the strophic form because you have harmonic structure that repeats over and over and over again over the same number of bars, and the melody of each verse is the same even though the words will be different. And so it's— the story is told by just verse after verse after verse after verse. And that's an easy way to distinguish that from other kinds of songs, or songs that have a chorus that repeats several times throughout a song. So it turns out that in the blues itself, we don't frequently see that very essential blues harmonic structure. Although a lot of the classic blues hits sung mostly by women in the '20s, by people like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith, those songs did frequently follow those very, very basic changes. A lot of country tunes do follow those basic changes. For instance, a tune like Folsom Prison Blues is in E and it's 4 measures of E followed by 4 measures— or 2 measures of A, 2 measures of E, 2 measures of B, 2 measures of E. "Move It On Over" by Hank Williams is another one. "Honky Tonk Blues" is another one. Interestingly, they don't follow that A-A-B lyrical form, but A tune that does follow both that harmonic structure and that lyrical form is the tune "High Heel Sneakers." This is a tune that I actually teach in my online course, Shuffle School 101. So I'll demonstrate everything I've talked about so far by playing a couple of verses of "High Heel Sneakers" for you in the key of A. Tommy Tucker, who had the hit, did it in the key of C. If you wanted to do that, you just slap a capo at the 3rd fret and you can be in the same key as Tommy. I don't have my capo with me, so I'm going to just go for it in the key of A. So this is played in a shuffle rhythm that's very, very straight sounding, very straight 8ths, or sometimes it's called a straight 4. Usually it's called the rock shuffle rhythm, and so it goes like this. I'm going to start with a little turnaround.
Put on your red dress, baby. 'Cause we're going out tonight. Put on your red dress, baby, 'cause we're going out tonight. Better wear some boxing gloves in case some fool wanna start a fight. Put on your high-heeled sneakers Wear that wig hat on your head. Put on your high-heeled sneakers. Wear that wig hat on your head. Well, Lord, I know that you know. Pretty sure you're gonna knock 'em dead.
So there's just a quick demonstration. That song was in the key of A. 4 measures of A, 2 measures of D, followed by 2 measures of A, 2 measures of B, followed by 2 measures of A. There were some other things like stop time going on in there, but the essential form was there. The AAB lyrical structure was there. So this demonstrates how the blues can be a really easy music to get started with. It takes a lifetime to master. I've been doing it for 30 years, and one of these days I'll get it right, but So I hope that helps you understand the 12-bar blues song structure, and I hope it helps further your guitar playing adventure. And I'd love for you to subscribe to this channel and make any comments and like or dislike this video. If you're on YouTube, I encourage you to go over to guidedguitarlessons.com. You can sign up for this course for free there, and any attached MP3s or PDFs are available over there in the course Monday Morning Blues. Again, absolutely free of charge. Just enter your email, enter your name, you're in. Obviously, I would love to have you join the conversation there, and if there's any questions or comments that you'd like to make about this lesson, you can put them in the comment section. And of course, I'm here to answer your questions about the blues and about playing blues guitar, so feel free to shoot me an email at Scott at gotaguitarlessons.com. I'll be happy to make your question the next subject of the next lesson in this series, Monday Morning Blues. Thanks a lot, go play some guitar.
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