LESSON } Blues

Andy G Jones looks at the I-VI-II-V turnaround. It’s one of the commonest progressions in music and in this lesson we end with a bluesy take on it.

Josh Smith mixes jazz and other styles into his blues playing

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This month we’re looking at a chord progression that occurs in countless pop, jazz and blues tunes -the I-VI-II-V turnaround, a device that’s often used to end a verse and set up a return to the start of the next. Sometimes this progression will be used as an intro or vamp to solo over, and we’ll start by looking at the scales. In its simplest form, this progression is diatonic to the home key, meaning that all the notes from the chords come from the parent scale (here C Major). Our second example outlines the chords by using only the notes of their scales. In bar 2, I stay within A Aeolian but I use a line that sounds a little like a blues lick, in order to inject extra soul into it.