Lesson 4
12-Bar Blues Progression Riff

Wanna go "Rock n' Roll"?

The 12-bar blues progression is a great way to begin!

I'm not going to dive into much theory here; just listen to the audio, follow the tabs, and play along with the backing track that follows the first tab.

Here's an easy-to-play 12-bar blues riff:

Pay attention that the riff has a shuffle rhythm. This means that instead of playing each chord one after another without rhythmic variation with eighth notes (2 chords per metronome click), now you use eighth-note triplets:

This would be 3 chords per metronome click, but you should skip every second chord in the triplet, so you end up with 2 chords per click, but played in an uneven, shuffling rhythm.

Sorry for the poor explanation—I find it quite hard to explain shuffle rhythm, but it's fairly intuitive to feel and not too difficult to play with some practice. The visual representation should help:

Straight Rhythm

Shuffle Rhythm

Another version of the 12-bar blues riff:

Notice that in this variant, each chord starts at the end of the preceding bar and carries over into the beginning of the next—this is shown by the curved lines (ties) in the tab.

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