Blues Soloing and Basic Harmony

by Christopher Sung In this lesson, we'll cover the basic 12-bar blues form and ways that you can imply the chord changes by knowing a little bit of basic harmony. Of course, the blues scale always works well over a blues progression, but hitting on some key notes of certain chords can really make your soloing stand out.

For this lesson, we'll look at the blues form in the key of A. This means we're dealing with three different chords: A7 · D7 · E7. That's it. Those are the only ones we need to know for now. Listen to the A blues form below to familiarize yourself with the form, and to see where each of these three chords are played.