3 Blues Turnarounds

The blues turnaround is that cool bit at the end of 12 bar blues (or 8 bar blues) where the guitar player does something a little bit, well… cool! Whether it's a quick chord turnaround progression or a sweet lick, no matter the variation, these are all known as turnarounds. In this blog post we will walk you through three very cool turnarounds that you can add to your blues repertoire. Let's dive in!

The Lesson

Firstly I would suggest watching the video, as most of the gold is in there! If you've come over to this page from YouTube, let me first say thank you for your support!

The Theory

In a nutshell, the turnaround is the root chord of the 12 bar blues for one bar, then moving to the V chord a beat into the second bar. This takes place at a specific point within the progression, as you can see here:

Turnaround 1

Our first turnaround is a classic chromatic idea, once again in the key of A blues. The main focus here is that your top note, the pedal note, is the root of the key. In this case that is A. We are then descending chromatically from the b7th to the 6th, b6th and finally landing on the 5th. The 5th is of course a strong chord tone in A, so resolves beautifully. We then jump to the E7 chord in an open position to finish the lick off.

Turnaround 2

This second turnaround is taking the chromatic idea a step further by using all the notes of the chord, other than the root, as a descending chromatic. This is a very cool, and slightly more jazzy vibe as the harmony is much richer. Notice as you move through these chord shapes that the A note is not changing, but the 3rd, 5th and b7th are descending one note at a time until we finish with another A chord to resolve the sound. We then finish on a fragment of an E9 chord at the end!

Turnaround 3

The final turnaround is a lead based turnaround, where we replace the chromatic passage, or chord passage, with a cool lead lick that resolves to the V chord root note. In this lick we're using a Clapton inspired turnaround, and it focuses on the A major and A minor pentatonic shapes combined together. Here are those two shapes:

This lick is great if you're doing more modern, high gain blues, so a very worthy inclusion. It can be quite speedy, so focus on the accuracy of the notes above all else first! Here's the tab: