Nothing in this lesson is new. That is the point of it: thirty-six bars is long enough that you have to decide where they are going, and every decision here is one Part 5 has already given you. Put the band on and leave it running — it plays chorus after chorus until you stop it.
Three times round this
Band · twelve-bar blues in A · shuffle · 84 beats a minute
A band plays the twelve-bar blues in A, shuffled, at 84 beats a minute: A7, A7, A7, A7, D7, D7, A7, A7, E7, D7, A7, E7.
Drums, bass and the shuffle riff, round the twelve-bar blues in A. The bass walks each chord from its root: 1, 3, 5, 6, ♭7, and back down.
Chorus one: stay where you are
One box, the one you have played since Part 2, and no more than you need. Play a phrase in the first two bars and stop. Leave bars three and four empty. Answer yourself over the IV and stop again. If the first chorus feels too easy, you are doing it right — you are not saving the best for later, you are leaving somewhere to go.
Over the I you can lean on the major third if you want the brightness, and over the IV you cannot. That was the chord-by-chord lesson, and it costs you nothing to obey: the ♭3 works everywhere, so when in doubt play the note you know.
Chorus two: climb
Start the second chorus where the first ended and go up. The joins are where you cross, and you cross on a note both boxes hold so the listener hears one line rather than a change of position.
The door out of the first box
Box 1 and Box 2 share six notes.
This diagram shows Box 1 and Box 2 together. The six ringed notes belong to both positions, spread across six strings. If you move from one position to the other through those notes, the listener hears one continuous line.
One crossing is enough for a chorus. A solo that changes position every bar sounds busy rather than wide — the climb is the thing being heard, and it needs bars to happen in.
Chorus three: the top, and home
The loudest thing you have
A unison bend on the root.
Both strings are struck together, a major second apart, with three frets between the two fingers, and G is pushed a whole step until it sounds A — the note the other string is already holding. There is no dashed line to aim at because the held string is the target: when the two stop beating against each other, the bend has arrived.
Third time round is where the unison bend belongs, because it only sounds loud against something quieter — and the two choruses before it are what made it quieter. Get to the top of the neck, use it, and then start coming down. You have four bars left and they are not a fade, they are an arrival.
The way back
A turnaround, over A7: ♭7 G, 1 A, 6 F♯, 1 A, ♭6 F, 1 A, 5 E.
Seven notes over four beats. It starts on the ♭7, and comes to rest on the 5, with vibrato. The dashed lines are the notes of A7, and that last note is one of them.
The turnaround is the door. Play it in the last two bars and the solo ends where the form does, which is what makes it sound finished rather than interrupted.
This lesson was drafted with the help of AI, so it may contain a mistake. Its diagrams are drawn by Everyfret’s own software. How Everyfret is made