I have the pleasure to teach the piano to a triplet. Her brothers play electric guitar. They want to form a band, so the boys’ music teacher asked me to teach my student a twelve bar blues riff in a particular key.
A 12 bar blues riff one of the most used chord progressions in popular music. One bar is a measure of music or four beats. Tap your foot steadily four times. That is one bar. Twelve bars, depending on the speed of the beats (or tempo), may take just under one minute. To complete a song, a band may have to repeat the twelve bar pattern a few times. It is heard in many songs from “Rock Around the Clock” to “Batman” to “Boogie Shoes.”
This is a simple blues riff because it lacks the decorative flats, sharps, sevenths, diminished, ninths, argots, and gobbledygooks.
