Earlier in the course a singer took the first half of each line and left the second half for the guitar. On your own you can play both parts: one phrase that asks a question, and another that answers it.
A call
A call, over A7: ♭3 C, 4 D, 5 E, ♭7 G, 1 A, ♭3 C.
Six notes over five beats. It starts on the ♭3, and comes to rest on the ♭3, bent up to the 3. The dashed lines are the notes of A7, and that last note is one of them.
The call climbs through the box and stops high, on the ♭3 pushed up into the chord’s third and held. It sounds unfinished because it stops away from the root, and that is what makes it a question.
An answer
An answer, over A7: ♭7 G, 1 A, 5 E, 4 D, ♭3 C, 1 A.
Six notes over five beats. It starts on the ♭7, bent up to the root, and comes to rest on the root, with vibrato. The dashed lines are the notes of A7, and that last note is one of them.
The answer starts where the call left off, high in the box, and falls home to the root. Played after the call, the two sound like one sentence with a comma in the middle.
The space between
Play the call in bars one and two of the twelve bars, and stop. Leave bars three and four empty. Play the answer in bars five and six, over D7, and stop again. What you leave out is doing work: it lets the listener hear the question before the answer arrives.
The form, to play the pair over
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.
Call in bars one and two, silence in three and four, the answer in five and six. Then choose: another pair, or silence until the turnaround.
Sources
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