12 Bar Blues Masterclass Course

Learn to play the 12 bar blues with Grammy winner and veteran bluesman Jon Cleary. We explore shuffle patterns, walking bass lines, licks, passing chords, and turnarounds.

The 12 Bar Blues Course w/ Jon Cleary

Simple Blues vs. Sophisticated Blues

When playing the blues, simplicity can be a virtue – the blues doesn’t have to be complicated and there is nothing wrong with being crude. New Orleans blues piano has evolved to a high degree of sophistication and nuance but it is useful to have a handle on both ends of the spectrum and be able to play simply as well as complicated. This course starts at the beginning and teaches the core skills needed to build strong foundations when playing the blues.

The 12 Bar Form & Left Hand Shuffle Patterns

The 12 bar blues tell a kind of story, one that takes you off on a journey and then brings you back home. This 12 bar form consists of three chords, the 1, 4 and 5.

The blues shuffle pattern that underpins this form is simple but it is essential to make the music swing. Spend enough time to practice and master these shuffle patterns as they are the engine that drives the music forward. The left hand is the most important part when playing blues piano.

Basic Blues Voicings & Right Hand Patterns

Once we have established our bass lines we can move onto our right hand chording. Jon talks us through the basics of the blues chord voicings and shows us some variations available for the 1, 4 and 5 chords.

We first start with basic triads shapes and then add 7th chords and some jazzy chord extensions such as 9ths and 13ths.

Blues Piano Riffs For The Right Hand

Next we take a look at a few right hand variations and some useful 12 bar blues licks that can be used over all three chords in the blues progression. The notes of this lick are based on the pentatonic scale but we use some passing notes to give it a more interesting bluesy flavour.

We can also add an entire chord to the final note of the phrase which creates a thicker and meatier sound which is characteristic of the New Orleans blues.

Walking Bass Patterns For The Blues

So far we’ve mainly been playing a simple shuffle-style left hand pattern which uses the root, fifth and sixth. However, there are lots of other options available for the left hand. One of these is a 12 bar walking bass patterns where we play octaves in the left hand.

12 Bar Blues Passing Chords

In this lesson Jon shows us some 12 bar blues passing chords and chord substitutions, outlining ways to add some elements of surprise into our blues playing.

In the lessons up to this point we have been using the simplest form of the 12 bar blues. In this form there are three essential chords – the 1, 4 and 5 – but as we turn up the level of sophistication we can start adding more chords to this basic frame. As we do this we get closer to a New Orleans-style blues.

New Orleans Style Turnarounds

The turnaround in its most basic form consists of four chords, beginning and ending with C. It should sound familiar, we often hear guitarists using it to start a song.

The New Orleans style turnaround is often embellished with trills in both the left and right hand. These kinds of sounds were introduced by early blues piano players and they act in a way like a drumroll.