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Creative Blues Chord Progressions

By Mike Hayes | July 31, 2010

Do you ever wonder where those cool sounds you are hearing are on
the guitar? Heaps of guitar players have told me they just aren’t
creative or they don’t have a really good ear for music; most of
these players are surprised when I tell them that you have to
form the habit of being creative.

Think about that for a moment, when was the last time someone
asked you to be creative to really ‘think outside the box’, my
guess would be not very recently!

Creative artists make a habit of allowing themselves to be
creative, in fact they go about their work in their own unique
way; for example, a friend of mine is a jingle writer and he
often finds himself working on time sensitive projects where he
has to come up with jingles virtually overnight, of course nobody
can be creative 24/7 so one of the ways he prepares himself for
his work is to keep a scrapbook where he keeps phrases and
sentences that he has cut out of newspapers, magazines and
books.

When he sees anything that takes his eye he immediately takes out
a pair of scissors and ‘bingo’ he’s got it, for future reference,
so when he’s trying to think of a neat way of saying something
and his client needs to have the project done and dusted by
9:00am Friday morning.

Pretty cool idea, it’s his own unique way of doing things and of
course the more you practice thinking and doing things ‘outside
of the box’ the easier it becomes, everyone finds it difficult at
the beginning that’s only natural, you can’t expect to be good at
something you haven’t spent any time doing!

Let’s take a creative look at a simple chord progression like the
12 bar blues and see how we can spice things up.

Progression #1: sample progression

C /// | G /// | C /// | C /// |

F /// | F /// | C /// | C /// |

G7 ///| G7/// | C /// | G7/// || C (last time)

Progression #2: creative variation

Cm / / / | G7 / / / | Cm / / / | Cm / / / |

Fm / / / | Fm / / / | Cm / / / | Cm / / / |

G7 / / / | G7 / / / | Cm / Fm / | Cm / G7 / || Cm (last time)

Progression #2 keeps close to the original blues template of
progression #1 with only a few changes; the main feature of
progression #2 is the change of musical ‘mood’ from bright to
dark by converting the major chords to minor chords.

Progression #3: another creative variation

Cm / / / | D7 / G7 / | Gm7b5 /// | C7 / / / |

Fm / / / | Fm / / / | Cm / / / | Cm / / / |

D7 / / / | G7 / / / | Cm / Fm / | Cm / G7 / || Cm (last time)

In progression #3 we have again altered the original chord
texture from major to minor and have kept the basic changes from
progression #1 however this time we have added some cyclic chord
substitution for harmonic interest and movement.

Play all three example to get a ‘feel’ for the variations and as
always keep listening for anything that catches your ear.

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