A Full Chorus

The last lesson asks for one thing: a chorus of blues that was built rather than wandered through.

A good chorus has a shape. The standard one is simple and it works: start low and sparse, build through the middle, peak somewhere around bars seven to nine, and come down into the turnaround. Twelve bars is not long enough for two climaxes, so pick one and save it.

Plan it before you play. Decide where your peak is. Decide which position you start in and which you end in, from lesson one. Decide whether you are playing the changes or riding one scale, from lesson three. Decide where the silence goes, from lesson eight.

Then play it, and finish with a turnaround from lesson five so the chorus ends where the form does rather than trailing off.

This track is a slow blues in E, which brings the path back to the key it started in.

Play one chorus, then stop and evaluate it honestly against the plan. Did the peak land where you intended? Did you leave the space you meant to leave? Did the turnaround arrive on time?

Then play another. The gap between the chorus you planned and the chorus you played is the whole remaining job, and it never entirely closes — which is why people play the blues for fifty years and still find it interesting.

A slow blues in E. One chorus, planned in advance, evaluated afterwards.