The Twelve-Bar Blues

Three lines of four bars, every one of them a dominant seventh — and the same six notes of the blues scale landing differently against each chord as the form goes round.

The twelve-bar blues, read in A

12 bars in three lines of four, one dominant seventh to a bar. Of the 72 readings — six blues-scale notes against every bar — 35 are chord tones, 3 are colour and 34 rub.

The flat third, the blue third, belongs to the chord in bars 5, 6 and 10 and rubs in the other nine.

The twelve-bar blues in A: each bar's chord, and each note of the A blues scale read against it as a chord tone, colour or rub, with its interval above the chord's root.
Bar Chord 1 b3 blue 4 b5 blue 5 b7 blue
1 A7 I7 A tone root C rub b3 D rub 11th Eb rub b5 E tone 5th G tone b7
2 A7 I7 A tone root C rub b3 D rub 11th Eb rub b5 E tone 5th G tone b7
3 A7 I7 A tone root C rub b3 D rub 11th Eb rub b5 E tone 5th G tone b7
4 A7 I7 A tone root C rub b3 D rub 11th Eb rub b5 E tone 5th G tone b7
5 D7 IV7 A tone 5th C tone b7 D tone root Eb rub b9 E colour 9th G rub 11th
6 D7 IV7 A tone 5th C tone b7 D tone root Eb rub b9 E colour 9th G rub 11th
7 A7 I7 A tone root C rub b3 D rub 11th Eb rub b5 E tone 5th G tone b7
8 A7 I7 A tone root C rub b3 D rub 11th Eb rub b5 E tone 5th G tone b7
9 E7 V7 A rub 11th C rub #5 D tone b7 Eb rub 7th E tone root G rub b3
10 D7 IV7 A tone 5th C tone b7 D tone root Eb rub b9 E colour 9th G rub 11th
11 A7 I7 A tone root C rub b3 D rub 11th Eb rub b5 E tone 5th G tone b7
12 A7 I7 A tone root C rub b3 D rub 11th Eb rub b5 E tone 5th G tone b7

Bars as printed in The blues progression (Open Music Theory (Hybrid Pedagogy Publishing)): I I I I | IV IV I I | V IV I I. The source adds that the last line may or may not close with a figure that sends the form back round; this site reads the bars as printed.

Three lines of four bars. The first line sits on the home chord. The second moves to the subdominant for two bars and comes home for two. The third goes to the dominant for a bar, drops back through the subdominant, and lands home for the last two. In the verse shape blues lyrics often follow, a line is stated, repeated and then answered, and each of the three gets one line of the form, which is where the twelve comes from.

Reading the table

Each row is a bar. Each column after the chord is one note of the blues scale in the key you picked, headed by its degree in that key: the root, the flat third, the fourth, the flat fifth, the fifth and the flat seventh, with the three blue notes marked. A cell gives the note, its class against that bar's chord, and its interval above the chord's root. The chord symbol links to the shape on the guitar.

Where it rubs, and where it doesn't

Read down the flat-third column and the whole character of the form is there. Over the home chord the flat third sits a semitone under the chord's own major third: the rub, and the reason a singer or a guitarist bends that note up towards the major third and so rarely lands on it squarely. When the subdominant arrives, the same note is that chord's flat seventh, a chord tone, and the rub is gone until the form comes home. Over the dominant it rubs again, this time a semitone above the chord's fifth.

The flat fifth rubs in every bar. The fifth of the key never rubs: it is a chord tone over the home chord and the dominant, and over the subdominant it becomes the ninth, a colour note. The subdominant bars are where the scale sits most comfortably, with three chord tones and a colour note; the dominant bar is where the most notes rub. That is a large part of what the form feels like from the inside: a long rub, a release, and one short, hard pull before home.

The last bar

The source prints bar twelve on the home chord, and so does this table. Plenty of bands put something else in that last bar to send the form back round, and the table does not guess which; the quick-change page reads a declared variant of this form rather than an assumed one.