Signature solo: 12-bar blues in A
A composed 12-bar blues solo in A: opens low and simple, targets the 3rd over the IV, peaks on a whole-step bend, and resolves through a turnaround.
- Style
- blues
- Written in
- A
- Length
- 12 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 1-4: state it
Low, slow and mostly root. Bar 2 is the quick change, so the long notes there belong to the D7: C, its ♭7, falling to A, its 5th. Hold them plain and the chord change is audible in the melody alone. The descending answer follows in bar 3, once the I is back under you. Bar 4 is two beats of silence and then a two-note pickup into the IV; leave that gap exactly as written, because it is what makes the next phrase land.
- 1A · string 4, fret 7
- 2G · string 4, fret 5
- 3A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
- 4C · string 3, fret 5
- 5A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
- 6C · string 1, fret 8
- 7A · string 1, fret 5
- 8G · string 2, fret 8
- 9E · string 2, fret 5
- 10D · string 3, fret 7
- 11C · string 3, fret 5
- 12A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
- 13G · string 4, fret 5
- 14A · string 4, fret 7
Bars 5-8: the IV, and the 3rd
Bar 5 lands F♯ as the D7 arrives — the major 3rd of the IV, reached by dropping a single fret off the box. Bar 8 pushes the ♭3 bend again, higher up in the phrase this time.
- 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 7
- 8G · string 4, fret 5
- 9A · string 4, fret 7
- 10E · string 2, fret 5
- 11G · string 2, fret 8
- 12A · string 1, fret 5vibrato
- 13G · string 2, fret 8
- 14E · string 2, fret 5
- 15D · string 3, fret 7
- 16C · string 3, fret 5bend to fret 6
- 17A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
Bars 9-10: the peak
The V chord, and the only whole-step bend in the piece: G up to A on the B string, held with vibrato. This is the loudest, highest moment and it happens once.
- 1C · string 1, fret 8
- 2A · string 1, fret 5
- 3G · string 2, fret 8bend to fret 10
- 4A · string 1, fret 5vibrato
- 5C · string 1, fret 8
- 6A · string 1, fret 5
- 7G · string 2, fret 8
- 8E · string 2, fret 5
- 9D · string 3, fret 7
- 10C · string 3, fret 5
Bars 11-12: resolve and turn it around
Back down to the root, then the turnaround walking the D string down under a held A, landing on the V so the next chorus has somewhere to start.
- 1A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
- 2G · string 4, fret 5
- 3A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
- 4A · string 1, fret 5 + A · string 4, fret 7
- 5A · string 1, fret 5 + G♯ · string 4, fret 6
- 6A · string 1, fret 5 + G · string 4, fret 5
- 7E · string 5, fret 7vibrato
Twelve bars, fixed. Learn it four bars at a time rather than end to end — the phrases are the units, and the silence between them is written in on purpose.
It is deliberately playable: everything sits in box 1 at the 5th fret except two notes, each a single fret outside the shape: the F♯ in bar 5, and the G♯ that lands on the V in bar 12. If a bar fights you, drop the tempo for the whole piece rather than rushing that bar to keep up.
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 16 of the blues path — writing your own. 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.