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Where the Blues Goes Next

The jazz reharmonisation of the same twelve bars — your next direction.

You now own the form. Twelve bars, three chords, in two keys, in both major and minor flavours, with a scale to solo on and a feel to play it with. That is genuinely enough to sit in at most blues jams on earth.

Before you go, here is the door to the next room. Jazz players keep the same twelve bars but fill the gaps with extra chords: a ii-V motion into the turnaround, a passing diminished chord in bar 6, a secondary dominant setting up the IV. The bones are identical, but there is a chord change every bar or two instead of every four.

You do not need to learn it today. You just need to hear that it is the same form so it does not sound like a different language when you get there.

Jazz Blues Metronome

The same counting exercise from lesson one, but with the jazz changes called out. Set it to A and listen for the bars you recognise.

Key
C
Tempo
BPM
Bar 1C7
Bar 2F7
Bar 3C7
Bar 4C7
Bar 5F7
Bar 6F♯dim7
Bar 7C7
Bar 8A7
Bar 9Dm7
Bar 10G7
Bar 11C7
Bar 12G7
What makes it “jazz” blues?The straight 12-bar blues sits on I-IV-V the whole way through. This reharmonization adds motion: bar 6 swaps in a passing diminished chord on the way back to I, bar 8 turns into a secondary dominant that leads the ear into bar 9’s ii chord, and bars 9-10 resolve that ii-V into I at bar 11 before the final bar turns the whole form back around. Listening for those ii-V movements — a chord a fifth above resolving down into the next — is the key to hearing (and eventually playing over) jazz changes in general, not just this form.

ii-V-I Practice Loop

The cadence that does most of the work in a jazz blues, looped on its own so you can drill it.

Key
C
Tempo
BPM
Bar 1Dm7
Bar 2Dm7
Bar 3G7
Bar 4Cmaj7
What’s a ii-V-I?The ii-V-I is the cadence underneath most jazz standards: a minor 7th chord built on the key’s 2nd degree moves to a dominant 7th on the 5th degree, which resolves down to the major 7th tonic — motion by descending fifths that the ear hears as strongly “going somewhere.” Drilling it on a loop in every key, rather than only inside a tune, builds the fluency to recognize and play over it the moment it shows up — which, in jazz, is often.

Finally, try soloing over a jazz blues with nothing but what this path taught you. A minor pentatonic will not cover every chord — and hearing exactly where it stops working is the most useful thing that can happen to you at this stage.

Spicy Jazz Blues Guitar Backing Track Jam in A major
AUsher Tracks#jazz#Amajor

A jazz blues in A. Same key as lesson one, same twelve bars, considerably more chords.