12 Bar Blues

I think that Blues pretty much made modern music possible. Artists such as Robert Johnson and B.B King paved the way for all the songs on this blog, except for All Ye Faithful, 'cause I'm pretty sure it was made pre-1800. Anyway, here's how to play the 12 bar blues!

The 12 bar blues is called the 12 bar blues for a reason. You play it in sections of 12 bars, then repeat it. Here's a formula for what chords to play: I  IV  V. If that made any sense to you, then good for you! If you didn't, then here's how it works. You'll plug any chord, say, A, into the slot where it says "I". Then you'll take your A and go 3 steps up, so it's D. and then take your D and put it another step up, so E. You can do it with any key, this one being A, so for G it would be G in the I, C in the IV, and D for the V. But if you play either of those, just like that, it won't sound anything like the blues, so here's a diagram-thing to show you where to plug the chords into and what to do to them:
Bar 1: I
Bar 2: I
Bar 3: I
Bar 4: I
Bar 5: IV7
Bar 6: IV7
Bar 7: I
Bar 8: I
Bar 9: IV7
Bar 10: V7
Bar 11: I
Bar 12: I
You might be wondering those 7s are for. Well, they mean that the chord you play on that line is a seventh chord. So in the key of A, the chords will be A, D7, and E7. The reason I keep on using the A key is because the chords are really easy and you can do a cool thing at the end instead of the last I called a walk up easily. The way you do it is you go to D7 in this case, and then walk it up to D#7, and E7. It's common in allot of blues songs. Have fun!