Improvising Over a Blues Turnaround

Improvising is one of the ultimate tests as a musician. It can show you the true grit of your playing. Sometimes, it can be a rude awakening, because getting lost within an improvisation as never fun.

In this article, we’ll discuss some simple methods that you can use to improvise over a basic twelve bar blues turnaround.

Before we get into improvising, it is important that you know what the twelve bar blues is. The twelve bar blues is one of the most common progressions in modern music.

It outlines the tonic, the subdominant, and the dominant of a given key. These can also be referred to as the I, the IV, and the V chords. The twelve bar blues are primarily a major progression, as the I, IV, and V chords of a major key are major, giving the progression a steady feel without too many changes. Also, the properties of the three scale degrees are very similar and include most of the same notes.

A turnaround is a bar at the end of a section that turns the piece back around, either to the beginning or to a previous section. The song then runs back through the previously passed sections to reach the passage again, this time played without the turnaround.

The most conventional twelve bar blues progression is as follows:

I I I I IV IV I I V V I I

If we use the notes themselves in the key of C Major, the progression looks like this:

C C C C F F C C G G C C

While the progression does change, the twelve bar blues more often than not end on the tonic, or the I chord (C). With a blues turnaround, the progression would end on the dominant, giving us:

C C C C F F C C G G C G

This is a bit less common. It takes away from the overall relaxed feel of the twelve bars. However, it does turn the passage back around.

To improvise over this progression, the best thing you can do is study the chords. What notes are involved in each?

The notes of a C chord include C, E, and G. The notes of an F chord include F, A, and C. The notes of a G chord include G, B, and D. This means that within the context of the twelve bar turnaround progression, we can use the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

These are all of the notes of the C Major scale. This means that, because of the properties of the twelve bar blues themselves, we are given nearly free reign within the scale to use whichever notes we like, as the progression includes all notes of the scale being used.

The best thing to do is to start off by creating simple patterns. Try making a linear melody following the progression, and once you are comfortable, try building off of it. The key is practice; try different approaches and see which works best for you!