- Hi, I'm Gareth and in this video
we're going to learn how to have some fun
with 12 bar blues.
Now this may be something that
you're already in tune with,
or it may be something
that's completely new to you,
or you may be thinking,
well, you know, I'm a classical musician,
I don't know anything
about all this stuff.
Doesn't matter what your background is,
this is such a great
thing to be able to do
because you can learn to do the
pattern for the 12 bar blues
and then before you know it,
you'll be making music using this pattern
having the time of your life.
So 12 bar blues, the clue's in the title,
it's something that sounds a
bit bluesy and is 12 bars long.
And this is the pattern
for a 12 bar blues,
it's all based on a chord scheme.
So bar one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
And we're going to go C
seven in the first bar,
C seven in the second bar,
C seven in the third bar,
C seven in the fourth bar,
F seven in the fifth bar,
F seven in the sixth bar,
back to C seven for bars seven and eight,
then G seven in nine, F seven in ten,
back to C seven for eleven and twelve.
So that's the pattern.
Now then, what do I mean by
all this C seven, F seven stuff
and all the rest of it?
Well, if I were to make a chord of C,
I take C.
I take three notes above it, which is E,
and I take five notes
above the C, which is G.
So that's a C chord.
It's got what we call a
root, a third, and a fifth,
if I put a seventh on it, that's B,
but I'm going to put a flat seven on it,
so it's going to be a B-flat.
That gives me a C seven chord.
So if you're wondering what C seven is,
well, this is what it is.
It's C, E, G, and B-flat.
So every time you come to a C seven chord,
these are the notes you're going to play.
So if you're a keyboard player,
you can just put down that chord.
If you're playing a melodic instrument,
or you're playing a bass or something,
well, you can just walk
up and down these notes,
and go onto B-flat.
You might want to use an A in between
and come through this chord.
But you're basic going C, E, G, B-flat,
but sometimes we're adding the A in.
It just sort of completes
the timing of things for you.
So that will be a C seven chord,
so if you can find that chord,
on your keyboard, your piano,
your bass, whatever you're playing,
well, you've already got
one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight
bars of your 12 bar blues,
so we're two thirds there already,
so that's pretty cool, isn't it?
Let's think about the other
two chords that you need,
the F seven and the G seven.
Now the F seven works like this.
Just the same thing,
you start with F at the bottom,
what's three above F, well that's A,
what's five above F, that's C,
what's seven above F, it's E,
and we're going to flatten it, okay?
So there's your F seven chord.
So it's F, A, C, and E-flat.
And again, if you were going
to run this on the bass,
you might be going F, A, C, D, E-flat,
D, C, A, F.
So you get the timing of that again.
So it's quite good to be able
to practise finding these chords
before you try and play the whole thing,
but that's the F seven chord.
Okay, one more to find.
It's the G seven chord.
So this time we've got G at the bottom,
three notes above G is B,
five notes above G is D,
and the seventh above
G should be an F-sharp,
so I'm going to make it an F-natural,
because we're flattening
the seventh on the key.
So it's a G, B, D, and an F.
Again, if you wanted to
walk up and down a bassline,
G, B, D, E, F, E, D, B, G.
It would be that or you
can find the chords.
If you're a keyboard player,
what I would do is just do
a little bit of practise
in finding these chords.
C seven, F seven, and G seven.
So you've just got those.
You can organise those as
chords anyway you want.
I mean, you could have these
notes in a different order.
Here, I've got G, B-flat, C, E,
but it's all the same notes.
I could have B-flat, C,
E, G, doesn't matter,
you can play around with that as you get
more kind of sophisticated
with using the chords,
but as long as you're using those notes,
you've got this chord scheme.
Okay, so the next thing
is just to try and kind
of work through it.
So here's bar one, C seven.
Okay, there's one
possible way of doing it.
I could do it like this or like that.
It's quite good to have something
on the bottom of the chord.
C, or the F, or the G.
So I've got four bars of C seven,
then I've got F seven
for another two bars,
then I'm back to C seven,
and then I've got G seven,
then I've got F seven,
and then I've got C seven to finish.
So those are the chords.
If you want to kind of pause the video
and just have a go at finding those chords
or watch the rest of the video
and then practise this later,
getting used to those
chords would be great.
Okay, now on the screen,
you can see two possible layouts
for how a 12 bar blues might work.
And in the first one,
we've got it kind of laid out
as it make look for a bass player.
So what I was talking about,
walking up and down,
going C, E, G, A, B-flat,
A, G, E, C.
So if you look at this, you can see,
this is what we've got here.
We've got four bars of that
in accordance with this pattern.
So there's four bars of that.
Now I need to shift to F.
Couple of bars of F.
Then I go back to C.
Couple of bars of C.
And onto G,
onto F,
and back to C for the last two bars.
And so on, you can go around
it again then if you want to
and do something else with it,
and if you've got other
musicians around you,
they could be jamming along
doing something melodic
that fits with that chord pattern,
or you could be playing
something else in the right hand,
could be a melody,
could just be punching some chords.
You can do a slow blues,
you can do a fast blues,
but good idea to start with a slow one
and just get used to doing that.
So what you might want to do
if you're a keyboard player
is just practise playing that bassline.
If you're a bass player,
well, that's a good thing
to practise as well.
If you're a keyboard player,
you might then think, can
I add some chords to that,
so maybe I can play that bass line
and just put some chords
in the right hand.
I mean, that's sounding
better already, isn't it?
It's not terribly interesting,
but it's kind of working.
You've got the bass line going,
you've got the chords going.
If you want to get really
adventurous with this,
of course, you can speed it up.
If you just want to do the
chords in the right hand
without doing a melody,
you could just do something
to spruce up the rhythm,
get a little bit of
syncopation into the rhythm.
Something like this, maybe.
Suddenly that's coming to life, isn't it?
We got a faster tempo on the go,
the bass line's zapping along,
I've got a little bit of syncopated rhythm
in the right hand.
Well, if you can manage
all that, that's great,
if that's all too much, do
something a bit simpler,
or just improvise some
kind of melody around that
or work with other musicians
who could improvise a melody
while you're working with the chords.
Get a drummer in if you can as well.
Gosh, the sky's the limit.
Or the other thing I've
got on the screen now
is another way of doing it,
you know, where you might
be doing the 12 bar blues,
exactly the same pattern,
exactly the same chords,
but maybe slightly gentler
tempo than we've just gone at
using a kind of swing rhythm, all right?
And you could fiddle about
with the detail of this.
You can adjust the rhythm a little bit
to make it a little bit more interesting.
You can add notes, take
notes out, whatever you like,
but basically, as long as you
follow the same chord scheme,
you can't go too far wrong.
So here's a different layout
just to show you another possibility.
And you could keep going all day
because you can go around that again.
So, you see, that's put the blues
in a slightly different framework,
more kind of swing like rhythms.
But anyway, there it is.
It's just a quick explanation
of how does a 12 bar blues work,
what's the scheme for the chords,
how do you find the notes of the chords,
how might you apply that
when you've got a running bass,
or when you've got something
that's in a slightly
gentler kind of swing style.
Once you get going with that,
you can have all the fun in the world
mucking around with it,
adding your own melodies to it,
working on your own,
playing with other musicians,
and it's such a great scheme to use
and it could give you
hours of endless fun.
