Blues Guitar Chords
Understanding the Dominant Seventh Chord
On this page about blues guitar chords, I will teach you about the three basic dominant seventh chords, so you can get down to playing some good ole blues guitar.
Playing the blues is probably one of the coolest genres of music to play, as well as being easy to learn. To get you started playing the blues, you need to learn the three dominant seventh chords that are built from the major scale.
A dominant seventh chord is basically a major chord, but with an added note, the flattened 7th (b7). Look at the diagram of the C major scale below to see what I mean.
These notes form the chord C dominant seventh or C7 abbreviated.
All you need to do is take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the scale, which as you may already know is a major chord, and you add the flattened seventh of the scale to it. Simple right?
For those of you that aren't sure about how chords are formed, you can check out the lesson on Learning Guitar Chords, so you'll have a better understanding of what I mean, and then come back to this page.
Now back to the blues guitar chords....
Great! Now let's look at the three dominant seventh chords you need to know in order to play a blues progression.
By taking the 1st, 4th, and 5th chords from a major scale and making them dominant seventh chords, you will be able to play 99.9% of all blues songs.
Using the key of E, as another example, the chords would be E7, A7, B7.
You may need RealPlayer or Windows Media Player to listen to the audio examples.
E7 
A7
B7
Now I will show you a simple 12 bar blues progression, used in tons of blues songs, to get you started playing.
When playing the following blues progression, you can either play along using the chords above, or you can try to play the progression the way I have it in the tablature.
You may need to download the free Adobe Reader to view the tab.
Here is the tab and the blues progression audio example....
12 Bar Blues
Progression PDF Click
to listen
It's good practice to learn these chords all over the neck, in every position, that way your not stuck playing the chords in just one position on the neck all the time.
That's it for this lesson on blues guitar chords and learning the dominant sevenths.
If you like you can go over to the free guitar backing tracks page where I have recorded some blues tracks for you to practice your soloing over. Or feel free to try another lesson.
Return to Free Guitar Chords from Blues Guitar Chords
