16-bar blues

In technical terms, the 12 bar blues is a chord progression that lasts for 12 bars, or measures. These 12 bars repeat throughout the course of the song. The chord progression is typically made up of 3 chords. Specifically, the 12 bar blues is based around the I, IV and V chords of any given key.

16 bar blues progressions are similar to the 12 bar blues, however the one chord is held for 8 bars instead of 4 at the beginning of the progression. Many blues songs have verses that follow the 16 bar form and then switch to a 12 bar form for the chorus or solo sections.

The term "12-bar" refers to the number of measures, or musical bars, used to express the theme of a typical blues song. Nearly all blues music is played to a 4/4 time signature, which means that there are four beats in every measure or bar and each quarter note is equal to one beat.

The blues has a distinct melancholic and somber tone, which is achieved through vocal techniques such as melisma, rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as “choking” guitar strings on the neck or applying a metal slide to the guitar strings to create a whining voicelike sound.

In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note that - for expressive purposes - is sung or played at a slightly different pitch from standard. Typically the alteration is between a quartertone and a semitone, but this varies depending on the musical context.

12 bar blues simply describes the number of bars or measures that a chord progression is mapped out over.

Blues progressions can all be understood as outgrowths from a basic prototype. The 12-bar blues progression is composed of three phrases, typically four bars each. A major difference between the blues and more traditionally tonal music is that it emphasizes plagal cadences instead of authentic cadences .

Thankfully, all of these chords are easy to play. They start with your average C major, F major and G major chords and add a 'dominant 7th' note. This 7th note is what transforms the chords and gives them that classic bluesy sound.

Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture.

sadness Since the fourteenth century, the word blue has been used to mean "sad." The noun blues came into use in the 1700s to describe a state of sadness or melancholy. Around a hundred years later, a Black American musical genre adopted the word to describe its particular twelve-bar chord progression and folksy sound.

In most blues songs, the form is a 12-bar sequence that cycles over and over. Conveniently enough, it's called the 12-bar blues, and it's a standard pattern that you'll find in thousands of songs, not just blues songs but in rock and country as well.

The Blue note is the Flat 5 (b5) Scale degree which sounds great in the blues, especially when mixed in with the Minor Pentatonic Scale.