Blues Guitar Chord Progressions

There are many ways to play blues progressions. Most of the common ones are 12 bar blues and consist of the I IV V chords. Blues often tends to mix up the chords with variations of major, minor and dominant. The dominant chords are often played as sevenths or ninths, often on the turnaround or last bar but can be applied to any of the I IV or IV chords.

A typical 12 bar blues chord progression will be played like this in the key of C, using all major chords.

C / / / F / C / G F C G

Sometimes you will see this..

C / / / F / C / G F C G7

Or even this…

C7 / / / F7 / C7 / G7 F7 C7 G7

Sometimes the progression is in a minor key. When using minor chords, it's common to leave out the last turnaround chords at the end because the V chord played as a minor doesn't have a very strong resolution. In the key of Cm for instance, you will often see something like this.

Cm / / / Fm / Cm / Gm Fm Cm /

Although there are many ways to play blues chord progressions, most blues songs are based on the same ideas so it's good to learn as many popular blues tunes as you can. It won't take long to see a familiar pattern among most of the blues chord progressions that get commonly used. We guitarists use moveable chords quite a lot so this makes it easy for us to change key quickly and easily but it's still a very good idea to learn the I IV V chords in all twelve keys. This helps you get creative when you aren't restricted to sticking to strict moveable shapes on the fretboard.