

Place your 1st finger on the 1st string/1st fret Now, for comparison, try a G7 chord instead: G7 blues guitar chord Place your 3rd finger on the 2nd string/3rd fret Place your 2nd finger on the 6th string/3rd fret Place your 1st finger on the 5th string/2nd fret Just one note makes quite the difference, no? Let's move on to the V Chord in this progression, the open G Major chord: Open G Major Chord (V Chord) G blues guitar chord Now, try your F7 bar chord and note the difference: F7 blues guitar chord Place your 4th finger on the 4th string/3rd fret Place your 2nd finger on the 3rd string/2nd fret Use your 1st finger to bar the strings on the 1st fret Here's your IV Chord, a standard F Major bar chord: F Major (IV Chord) F blues guitar chord Let's take a look at the other chords in the C Major blues progression (and their seventh chord alternatives) so you can start playing the whole thing. Hear the difference between those two chords? That subtle change (adding a Bb to your C chord) makes the difference between a standard major-sounding chord and a bluesier alternative. Place your 3rd finger on the 3rd string/3rd fret

Place your 2nd finger on the 5th string/3rd fret Place your 1st finger on the 4th string/2nd fret Now, if you wanted to "blues it up," you'd instead start our blues progression with a C7 Chord, like this: C7 blues guitar chord Place your 4th finger on the 1st string/3rd fret Place your 3rd finger on the 5th string/3rd fret Place your 2nd finger on the 4th string/2nd fret Place your 1st finger on the 2nd string/1st fret Recall that you would play your open C Major chord (the I Chord, in this case) like so: Open C Major Chord (I Chord) C blues guitar chord For today, though, we'll focus on how you'd create your chords (and blues progression) in the key of C Major. There are numerous permutations of the seventh chord you can apply to your blues playing. You can create such chords by adding the lowered seventh scale tone to the chord you're playing (hence the name), and the result is a unique sound that your standard chords alone can't quite achieve. You can play the blues with major and minor chords, but one thing that helps add the distinctive sound associated with the genre is making liberal use of seventh chords in your playing. The above isn't the only way the 12-bar blues can work, but it is fairly representative of what you can expect from a blues progression and a good way to get started. Here's an example of how a common blues progression goes: 12 bar bluesĪt this point the 12-bar pattern would repeat, continuing the song.

Blues progressions are almost exclusively played in 4/4 time and dominated by the root (I Chord), with the IV and V chords providing that extra bit of flavor to keep things interesting. The standard 12-bar blues is a I-IV-V chord progression most typically divided into three four-bar segments. By lesson's end, you should be ready to lay down some soulful blues rhythms and start creating your own blues style in earnest. With that in mind, we're going to dive into the world of blues chords and the basic 12-bar blues. The genre is deeply tied to the instrument, and nearly every guitarist worth their salt has at least fantasized about jamming out à la B.B. The 10 Best Blues Guitar Chords (Chord Progressions, 12 Bar Blues.)įew things scream "guitar" as loud as playing the blues.
