5 Turnarounds That Will Transform Your 12 Bar Blues

[00:00:00]The turnaround in a 12 bar blues is where all of the action happens. It's this moment of tension that builds.

[00:00:08]Everything's kind of, you know, building to this sort of climax and then boom, it loops us back to the top of the progression. So, it's this wonderful chance for us, especially if we're kind of playing a solo performance on an acoustic or just jamming on our electric to add a little turnaround into the mix, which is a little bit more special and again amplifies that sort of sense of tension. and then release as we get pulled back to the one chord. Okay, the beginning of the progression. Now, you're going to see all sorts of different kind of turnarounds. And in this lesson, we're going to kind of look at five classic ideas that I think are really, really cool. But essentially, the theory of these is more or less the same. In the turnaround, the final two bars of a 12 bar, we're going to be playing the one chord, then the five chord, and that five chord. Sort of, let's say, if we're in the key of E, so the B B7 in the key of E, that five chord pulls us back beautifully to that one chord. So, that is what's happening in so many of the turnarounds that you might encounter. you're playing normally a ascending or descending chromatic line that takes you to either the note of that five chord or the five chord itself or maybe the the the tonic note so the root note so like E before you then jump onto the five chord to pull you back in.

[00:01:35]So it's this kind you're basically in other words replicating that one to five movement to then pull you back down to the top of the progression. Okay. So with that in mind, that's a great way for you to kind of see what's going on here and then reverse engineer it and kind of work out from a technical point of view. Okay, that's the note that's going on there. Great little exercise to go through. With that in mind, let's dive into these five turnarounds to give you some ideas to get started creating your own. Our first turnaround is perhaps the simplest of all these, and it's just a nice walking baseline that kind of chromatically ascends to that five chord. So in the key of E in this kind of open position shuffle that sort of turn around we're going to target the B idea down to the A and then Okay. So just nice and straightforward with that kind of swinging shuffle rhythm. We're going to play open E string twice.

[00:02:40]the third fret on the E string twice.

[00:02:43]Open A string.

[00:02:45]First finger on the A string, first fret. And then you're gonna slap shift that first finger up single fret.

[00:02:53]Play it twice and then go into the B7.

[00:02:57]So B dominant seventh chord to finish off.

[00:03:10]Nice and straightforward and a lot of fun. Next up, and this one is a little bit more complicated, I have to say, but this is an essential turnaround skill, is a hybrid picked idea. So, I'm using a pick. Um, and and here we're going to we're going to be playing notes on different strings separated by a sixth interval. Classic kind of blues idea.

[00:03:29]Really, really cool. You see it everywhere. So, we're going to do that same sort of idea.

[00:03:38]And then we're going to take our first finger and do this.

[00:03:46]Okay. So, we're going to take our first finger. We're going to put it on the second fret of the A string.

[00:03:52]Then move it down to the second fret of the D string and play it and slide it up to the fifth fret of the D string. We're then going to grab our middle finger, put it on the fifth fret of the B string, and we're going to alternate between the thumb and the middle finger. So, it's going to be like the middle finger is going to pick out the B string. And you're going to go you're gonna go the the D string to the B string and back to the D string.

[00:04:19]Then shift.

[00:04:22]Shift again.

[00:04:26]The last time you're going to play the two notes together.

[00:04:32]Okay. Nice and straightforward. And then open E string before hitting that B7 chord. I say nice and straightforward.

[00:04:41]That's actually anything but nice and straightforward. If this is new to you, that's going to be really quite tricky to to begin with to synchronize all that up. But it's a wonderful, wonderful skill to get kind of, you know, get under your fingers. And it really gives you a lot of cool opportunities because, as you'll see, many of these other sort of uh turnarounds are based around this hybrid picking idea. So, take your time with that and give it a go. Once you've got that hybrid picking idea under your fingers, then you can go to this next one, which is a pedal tone or pedal note kind of idea. So, what does that mean?

[00:05:14]It means we're going to do that same sort of chromatic descending idea, but with one note held on the top. So, this is actually how Robert Johnson pretty similar to how Robert Johnson starts Sweet Home Chicago. So, you're going to take your little finger and put it on the 12th fret of the high E string. And then you're gonna take your ring finger and put it on the 12th fret of the D string. And you're going to then work down. So hybrid picking the two strings.

[00:05:44]Okay. Two on each before then going for a little chromatic chord from the C C7 down to B7.

[00:05:59]So, okay. And you could have absolutely played that sort of separately. So, and that's going to sound really, really nice as well. The cool thing that's happening there, just from a theoretical point of view, is you're holding the notes of E, so the tonic note of the of the of the key, and then you're working down to the note of B, which is that five chord. So, we're getting that kind of five to one feeling. And then we're just finishing it off with that chord. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

[00:06:43]And all of these ideas you can play around with and put them into different positions just sort of following that same theoretical thread. It's a lot of fun and I would highly recommend it.

[00:06:54]Next up, we have our contrauntal contrauntal. I'm not sure that my my uh pronunciation on that one is totally right, but we have these contrauntal turnarounds where we have like two lines and one of played at the same time and one of them is ascending and the other one is descending. It's kind of a little tricky to execute. You got some big stretches and feels a little bit like uh rubbing your head with one hand and tapping your stomach with the other, but it all comes together and it sounds pretty cool like this.

[00:07:33]So, what are we doing here? We're starting on the open E. Then we're playing with big stretch here. Four on the low A string, uh, eight on the on the B string. We're playing those two notes together hybrid picked twice. And then the first finger is moving up by a fret and this section is moving down by a fret. So the first finger moves up and you play the you put the ring finger on the seventh fret of the B. So now we're five on the A, seven on the B.

[00:08:01]Same sort of idea. They both move up again once more. Uh both move again once more. One down, one up.

[00:08:10]Then a little shift here. So, so you've got the first and the middle finger and then a little shift here to be five on the B with the first finger, seven on the A with the ring finger.

[00:08:22]So, the last one you just play once, hit the open E, and then again that lovely little C to C7 to B7.

[00:08:38]So tricky, but absolutely worth it. And again, just another little turn around that you can pull out in this solo performance kind of vibe to have a lot of fun and also just create a lovely vibe in the playing.

[00:09:06]And last, but definitely not least, this kind of lead turnaround idea, shamelessly stolen from guys like SRV, Bonnie Raid, all those wonderful players who are basically what they're doing is they're dropping out of the cordal part and they are playing a lick in the first position of the E minor pentatonic scale.

[00:09:31]Okay, now that's like one very SRV kind of flavored idea, but it could be, you know, you don't have sort of do that idea and just any sort of note grouping in that first shape is going to sound really, really nice. So here you've got two options to kind of bring it to a close. Either you end on the the fifth note, so the note of B to kind of create that five to one feeling. Something like this.

[00:10:04]Okay, that's going to sound really, really nice. And there's some nonSRV kind of flavored examples like Freddy King, Tour Down and uh some great Albert King tracks where they're doing that. Or you can walk up into the chord And what I like to do there is you get into the position and then you pick out the next note of the chord before then playing it. So if we're playing that B7 voicing here, you know, you could hit the fifth of the chord, that F sharp, and then you play the rest of the chord after that. Or you can go for this kind of again very SRV flavored idea by going for this voicing. Okay. So middle finger on the second fret of the A, first finger on the first fret of the D, ring finger on the second fret of the G, little finger on the second fret of the E.

[00:11:01]And you just play into that chord as you move up, hitting that ring finger.

[00:11:10]So that time you don't actually play through the whole the whole cord the chord as a whole. You just pick out the notes and then go into the shuffle. So so good. Such an awesome way to kind of just bring some life into what you're doing. So there we go guys. Five turnarounds, each with a different flavor, each with a kind of very different feel. Experiment with them.

[00:11:31]Chop them in and out. Try and take the fundamental theoretical ideas underlying them and then go and make your own turnarounds. It's going to be a lot of fun. Let me know how you get on. And that's it. I'll see you next time.