Guitar All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2

Blues Progressions, Song Forms, and Moves

IN THIS CHAPTER

Distinguishing the primary key families and their chords

Recognizing the structure of a blues song

Playing the 12-bar blues

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Blues is a welcoming, beckoning music for both listener and performer that says, “Join in and start contributing!” Its repetition and call-and-response qualities — derived from its forebears, the work song and field holler — make it easy for people to join in a song on the fly. Musicians can grasp the form quickly, and listeners have an expectation that’s set up by each phrase, which is then satisfied by the lyrics or the chord progression. Best of all, these simple, infectious, and ingenious devices that make the blues so relatable are easy to understand and master, and are covered in this chapter.

Blues by the Numbers

You can learn music a lot quicker if you associate chords and keys by their numerical equivalents. Book 3 Chapter 4 goes into this in detail, but here is a short recap. In any key, the root or tonic (the tone that names ...