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Killer Blues Chord Progressions You Can Use At Your Next Jam Session

By Mike Hayes | July 31, 2010

My first jam session was a disaster, prior to this fateful event
I had built quite a decent reputation as a guitar player who
could read music and play a variety of musical styles
authentically; full of confidence I decided to accept an
invitation to a jam session at a friend’s home; he was a keyboard
player, both his mum and dad were music teachers and since they
were away for the weekend it seemed like the ideal time for us
fledgling musicians to stretch our musical wings.

The first sign of trouble was when I noticed that there didn’t
appear to be any music stands set up in the practice room, I
thought they must have forgot to bring them in but as the drummer
arrived without his music stand I began to get a little nervous;
oh well, we could easily rest the music on a pot plant or
something I certainly wasn’t going to let a few music stands
spoil my chance to impress everyone.

So there we were John on organ, Adrian (a guitar player I hadn’t
met before) and Glenn on drums, we didn’t have a bass player for
the jam session (something I failed to notice until much later in
the day) however John managed to play such great bass parts on
the pedals of the organ we probably didn’t need a bass player …
and still no music stands in sight… HELP!

It had never occurred to me that everyone at jam session played
‘by ear’ (from memory); up until this point in my musical life
everything was played from the printed page, as the guys started
to play I knew I was in deep trouble.

The first song was ‘The House Of The Rising Sun’, I had no idea
what to play or what they were playing, they could have been on
the moon for all I knew! After about twenty minutes I worked out
two of the chords but didn’t know where to put them, fortunately
they finished that song just in time for me to make some feeble
excuse about equipment failure.

Explaining that my amp was cutting out seemed to be a good way of
’saving musical face’, Adrian sympathized with me and said I
could use his spare amp for the next song (I later found out he
always carried a spare amp in his car).

Thanks … Adrian!!!

Lesson number one for the day … don’t lie.

Plugged into Adrian’s spare 100 watt Marshall amp I was ready (in
theory) to blast into the second piece for the day, a blues in G,
everyone knows the blues don’t they?

Not everyone!

Lesson two … LEARN THE BLUES!

As the band played louder and louder my confidence grew until
eventually I managed to make a few strange animal sounds that
remotely sounded like a guitar; boy, was I out of my depth.

Over the years I have become more and more aware of the important
role the blues plays in increasing our ability to play music ‘by
ear’ and develop a sense of where the music is going. It’s
essential to learn the basic changes in all the popular keys and
experiment playing interesting variations of these basic blues
templates.

Here is one of those variations for you to try and add to your
collection. Both examples are presented in the minor 12 bar blues
format.

Progression #1: original C minor blues

Cm /// | Cm /// | Cm /// | Cm /// |

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

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

Progression #2: minor blues with chord substitution

Cm / Cm/Bb / | Ab7 / G7 / | Cm / Ddim / | Cm/Eb / Edim / |

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

Ab7 / / / | G7 / / / | Cm / Cm/Bb / | Ab7 / G7 / || Cm (last
time)

Don’t forget to commit these blues chord progression to memory,
get them off the paper and into your head.

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