look at EP327. It will get you started.
Ron

Darrell,
You might try the beginners lessons, which is at the bottom left of the lessons page. There is a section on the twelve bar blues, which might help.

In general, you can assign a number to each degree of the major scale. In the key of C for example, the notes of the major scale are C D E F G A B. So if you assign a number to each note of the scale, C would be 1, F would be 4, and G would be 5. So the C chord would be formed by taking every other note resulting in C-E-G. The other chords would be formed the same way starting on their respective roots. Now in blues, all the chords are dominant seventh chords, so the actual spelling of each chord would be C-E-G-Bflat, F-A-C-Eflat, and G-B-D-F.

A twelve bar blues in C in its most basic form would be be four bars of the one chord (C7), followed by two bars of the four chord (F7), back to two bars of the one chord (C7), followed by one bar of the five chord (G7), one bar of the four chord (F7), then two bars of the one chord (C7). There are variations on this formula, but that is a good starting point. If you wanted to do it in a different key, you would just assign the numbers to that scale, and form the chords in a similar manner.

Hope that helps.

Bob

And then there’s the 1, 5, 4 progression in Keys to the Highway. And the 1, 4, 1, 4 and the 1, 7, 1, 7 often used by the Allman Bros, and the 2, 5, 1 often used by jazz musicians.

Hi Darrell,

I think Ron may have meant EP127. Bob is right about the beginner lessons Module 8 blues Rhythm as good place to start.
I attached (I think) a basic example that matches what Bob is describing but uses major chords instead of 7ths (7ths are generally considered more bluesy sounding so stick with those if you know them). In the attachment you can see the 12 bars indicated along with the associated 1,4,5 placement in the bars. Hope this helps.

Dave

Sorry, I did intend to say 237 Darrell.
Brian breaks down the key of A into numbers.
Ron