Eight-bar chorus: call, answer, turnaround
Eight bars of blues in A using week 1-8 material: double stops, a target 3rd over the IV, and a turnaround to finish.
- Style
- blues
- Written in
- A
- Length
- 8 bars
- Feel
- shuffle
- Tempo
- ♩=100
Numbers are the order you play them, so notes sharing a number sound together. Drop the tempo until it is clean, then bring it back up. Each section has its own play button — learn them one at a time.
Written in A, and the writing below describes it there. Move it to another key and the shape does not change, only where its root sits — which is the difference between knowing a lick and knowing a fret number.
Bars 1-2: double stops
Open with two voices rather than one. Week 6's double stops make a single guitar sound like it is comping and soloing at once, which is a strong way to start.
- 1E · string 2, fret 5 + A · string 1, fret 5
- 2E · string 2, fret 5 + A · string 1, fret 5
- 3G · string 2, fret 8 + C · string 1, fret 8
- 4A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
- 5A · string 1, fret 5
- 6G · string 2, fret 8
- 7E · string 2, fret 5
Bars 3-4: following the chord
The F♯ lands as the IV arrives, a single fret below the box note above it — the clearest signal to a listener that you are following the chords rather than the key.
- 1A · string 4, fret 7
- 2C · string 3, fret 5
- 3D · string 3, fret 7
- 4F♯ · string 4, fret 4vibrato
- 5D · string 3, fret 7
- 6C · string 3, fret 5
- 7A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
Bars 5-6: single-note answer
Back to one voice and down through the box. After two bars of double stops the plain line reads as a reply, which is the contrast doing the work.
- 1C · string 1, fret 8
- 2A · string 1, fret 5
- 3G · string 2, fret 8
- 4E · string 2, fret 5
- 5D · string 3, fret 7
- 6C · string 3, fret 5
- 7A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
- 8C · string 3, fret 5bend to fret 6
- 9A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
Bars 7-8: the turnaround
Week 8's turnaround: the chromatic walk down the D string beneath a repeated A, landing on the V. This is the gesture that tells a listener the chorus is over and another is coming.
- 1A · string 1, fret 5 + A · string 4, fret 7
- 2A · string 1, fret 5 + G♯ · string 4, fret 6
- 3A · string 1, fret 5 + G · string 4, fret 5
- 4E · string 5, fret 7vibrato
Eight bars rather than twelve, so it is learnable inside a checkpoint week, and it uses only what weeks 1-8 have taught. Every phrase here has a home somewhere earlier on the path.
This is an eight-bar blues, which is its own form rather than a shortened twelve: two bars of A7, two of D7, three more of A7, and E7 in the last bar to hand the chorus back. The IV therefore arrives in bar 3 instead of bar 5, and the V is held back until the turnaround. Play those changes below before you learn the line over them, because everything the piece does is a response to where they fall.
The shape matters more than the notes: two bars of texture, two bars that follow the chord, two bars of reply, two bars that close. Play it once and you have played a complete musical sentence.
The changes underneath it
This piece has a form of its own rather than the one the jam steps play, so the changes are here to hear. Start the backing band and play the line against it: every moment the section notes point at is a response to where these bars fall, and none of it is audible over a different grid. Tap a single bar to see the chord and the note worth aiming at over it.
The vocabulary it uses
None of this is new material. Every phrase here is a lick from earlier in the path, arranged — which is the argument the piece exists to make: a solo is vocabulary in an order, not a separate talent.
Where this fits
This caps week 8 of the blues path — stealing licks by ear. Learn it fixed and from memory: playing the same thing twice on purpose is a harder discipline than improvising, and it is the one thing you finish the path able to show someone.