Turnarounds

Bars eleven and twelve of a blues are the turnaround: the passage that closes one chorus and throws the music back to the top.

It is the only part of a blues with genuinely standard vocabulary. Solos differ, comping differs, but turnarounds are shared property — a few dozen phrases that every blues player knows, and knowing them is a large part of sounding like you belong.

The classic shape is a chromatic line descending against a fixed high note. In G, the moving line runs B, B flat, A, A flat while the top note stays on G. The descending half steps generate tension against the unmoving note above, and the whole thing lands on the V chord, which fires the form back around to bar one.

Play it slowly and listen to what the fixed note does. It is the same trick as a pedal point in classical music, in a form that never uses the word.

A descending turnaround in G, landing on D7

The G string falls a half step at a time while the top string holds G. The last chord is a plain open D7 — the V, which sends you back to the top.

e
B
G
D
A
E

--3---3---3---3-------2---|
----------------------1---|
--4---3---2---1-------2---|
----------------------0---|
--------------------------|
--------------------------|

D7

D7, the chord the turnaround lands on. Exactly the shape the tab ends with.

This track is a blues in G with a clear twelve-bar cycle.

Do nothing but count to bar eleven and play the turnaround, chorus after chorus. Rest for ten bars, play two, rest again.

This is deliberately boring and it is the fastest way to internalise where the form turns over. Most players who get lost in a blues get lost because they have never counted anything except the bars they were playing in.

A blues in G. Rest for ten bars, play the turnaround, repeat.