Alternate chords in a blues progression

during the turnaround when you go V7-IV7-I7, move the 7 chord chromatically down from V to IV (i.e. Play a b57 chord for a second)

add in IV7 everyone in a while

http://www.jazzmando.com/blues_501_jazz.shtml

That has some really interesting variations. Enjoy!

thanks

Basically, for any measure think about the ROLE the measure plays in the progression.

Measure 1 is there to set the key of the song. You really need to make that first measure, first beat chord do the same thing. So any chord that plays a dominate role in the key's chord structure will do the same thing. But after that you have 3 beats to transition to the second measure. You can use those 3 beats to walk your bass line to where you're going, to set up a mini-turn-around, to set up a faux-key change, whatever you want to do harmonically.

Measure 2 in a 'basic' standard 12 bar blues is usually played as IV chord. It's a measure that is there to add a little harmonic diversity while at the same time not moving away from the dominant key center. Again, pick any chords that do the same thing. if you walked your bass line here for the last 3 beats, maybe this is a resting place on a sub-dominant chord or it's relative minor. Or maybe you're keep walking right around to a dominant turn-around. Or anything else that plays the role of keeping the key center while providing a little harmonic interest.

Measures 3 and 4 in a 'basic' 12 bar blues is just a resting place. Go nuts! The first thing to think about is adding a turn-around in measure 4 to take you too the IV in measure 5. But you almost literally do anything here and be ok. A lot of guys get milage out of +9 and dim substitutions in these measures. This space, and measures 7 and 8, are where you have a lot of freedom, harmonically speaking in these first two lines. As long as whatever you do leads back to the sub-dominant IV sound in measure 5, you're going to be ok.

measure 5 is the sub-dominant IV chord in the standard form. It's role is act as the start of a mirror phrase to the first line. So, whatever you've done for the last 4 measures, do it again around the IV sound. You still have room to vary yourself here, extensions tend to work well in these 4 measures, and you can move to the relative minor or major key center, but since the melody is usually a mirror phraseing of the first line, you don't want the harmony to move too far from what you did for the last line either. That said, you can think of this as two phrases, one around the IV sound nad one around the I sound. Play with mini-turnarounds in measures 6 and 8.

The last line is a concluding phrase that also functions as a turn-around to the front of the song. Here, anything that gets you home will work and you have 4 measures to get there, so there's a lot of room for creativity. What you want to do is convey the motion from the dominant back to the tonic. You can get there a lot of different ways.

Basic things to start learning to do:

Substitute the 6 chord for the Maj7 tonic chord. For example CMaj7 becomes C6.

Substitute the #dim7 chord for the IV. F7 becomes F#dim7.

Substitute the relative minor 7 chord for the V7 chord. G7 becomes Dm7.

Walk your changes. Instead of measures 7,8 and 9 in C going:

| CMaj7 | CMaj7 | G7 |

Walk it down:

| CMaj7 F7 | Em7 Ebm7 | Dm7 (the relative minor of G7 a substitution)

Or walk it up:

| Am7 (relative minor sub) Bm7 | C7 D7 E7 F7 | G7 |

If you're doing a Jazz blues, practice tosisng in ii-V-I changes or ii-V-vi-I changes anywhere!

Learn to use tritone substitutes: Any dominant 7th chord can be substituted by another dominant 7th chord whose root is a b5 away from the first chord. And dont' be afraid to play with inversions!

So instead of playing two measures of |C7 | C7 | You can do something like:

| C7/G Gb7b5 | Dm7/F G7/F C7/E |

C7 with a G in the bass, tritone substitution for C7 Gb in the bass, ii-V-I mini-turnaround. The result is a nice walk of the bass-line from G to E, setting you up very nicely to go to the IV (F) on the next measure.