4 Chords You Must Know To Play The Blues

When it comes to playing the blues there are two things you need to know.

1.) How the 12 bar blues works

2.) How do I play them

Thankfully there are some keys which are more popular then others. The two most commonly played keys in the blues are E and A, if we determine which chords are played from those keys we can figure out the most common chords for blues.

In this article I'm going to explain the basics of the 12 bar blues pattern, and then show you which chords you need to know in order to play them in the Key of A and E.

12 Bar Blues

The 12 bar blues is a pattern which repeats itself through out most blues songs and is made up of three different chords from a given key.

The chords you need to know are the one, the four and the five chord. These chords are not difficult to find, simply refer to the scale for the particular key you want to play in, eventually they will become second nature.

The pattern you play these chords in is:

I – I – I – I – IV – IV – I – I – V – IV – I – V

Where I stands for the one chords, IV stands for the four chord and V for the five chord.

Blues in the Key of A

We must first find out I, IV and V chords. We can get these from looking at the A major scale.

A – B – C# – D – E – F# – G# - A

So our I chord is the A, our IV chord is the D and our V chord is the E.

By plugging these into the 12 bar blues pattern above you can play the 12 bar blues in the key of A.

Blues in the Key of E

Like above we can find the chords we need by looking to the E major scale.

E – F# - G# - A – B – C# - D

The I chord is the E, the IV chord is the A and the V chord is the B.

Most Common Chords Used

There is some overlap between the chords for A and E. Between the Key of A and the Key of E we have the E chord, D chord, A chord and the B Chord. These are the most common chords used in blues guitar patterns.

To make these sound even more bluesy you'll want to play something a bit different then just open major chords. An advanced way to play is by learning 7th chords for your blues progressions. This is a bit outside this article blues guitar lessons dvd would allow you to learn the basics to improve your blues skills.

When you learn blues guitar the process isn't all about technical study, but more about learning the basics and making it your own.