Taking Measure of the 12-Bar Blues
Most blues songs take the form of the 12-bar blues, so called because it consists
of 12 bars (i.e., measures) of four beats each. There are three sung lines, each
one fitting into a four-bar section. Almost always, the first line is sung twice,
and then the thought is completed or answered by the final line.
A usual blues verse, with the chord changes in the key of E, looks like this:
Trouble last night and trouble the night before
Trouble last night and trouble the night before
Trouble in my home and trouble knocking at my door.
The words fit against a chord structure that you would strum out like this, with
each slash representing one beat:
Represented in music, the melody and strumming looks like this:
12-Bar Blues
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