Chord Progression and the Twelve Bar Blues

Most people listen to music as recreation. Music is a very powerful medium of expression and a profound art form. Some people, however, listen to music in order to understand it, and when music is heard carefully, patterns emerge.

One of these patterns is known as the twelve-bar blues. "The Blues" is one of the ancestors of rock and roll. The twelve-bar progression is simply the number of measures of time required to return to the tonic chord in the key of the song.

Basic twelve-bar blues follow a common progression. Tonic for four measures, sub-dominant for two measures, tonic for two measures, dominant for one measure, sub-dominant for one measure, then tonic for the last two measures. In order to get the all-important dominant to tonic resolution, some forms add a quick fourth-beat dominant to measure ten just before the progression returns to tonic.

This progression has influenced almost all popular music for decades, and it is far more common than most people might think. Listen carefully to the next hit on the countdown. You might be surprised to hear a chord progression invented nearly a century ago.