Blues Rhythm Basics
Blues has influenced the music industry more than any genre nowadays. You can hear its influence in almost every song you hear these days. Therefor, it is essential to have a good knowledge of it.
Triplet Feel
Blues is usually played in a swing feel, which means that each beat is divided into three equal eight notes and you only play the first and third eight note per beat.
Blues Form
Below is a standard 12 measure blues form. If you ever want to play blues with a friend, you'll need to understand this graphic, so that you can play the blues in any key you wish. As you may notice, the numbers below are written in roman numerals which is very common in music to describe a chord within a scale. In a major scale there are 7 notes and each chord created from these notes bears a roman numeral that represents it.
I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii
The upper case numbers represent major chords and the lower case numbers represent minor chords. For the blues, all that we will be using are the three major chords: I, IV, V
Blues Form
In the example below, the roman numerals were replaced by the name of the chords that will be played in each measure in the key of E major. In the key of E major, the chords are usually E, F#m, G#m, A, B, C#m, B#m(b5). As mentioned above, the only chords used for the blues are the major chords or upper case roman numerals, so in this case E, A and B.
E Blues Form