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Standard Blues Progression Using 7th Chords

    In this lesson, we’ll learn how to play along with a blues progression using a popular dominant 7th chord pattern.

    There are 3 types of 7th chords. Dominant, major and minor. The dominant 7th chord is the most commonly used. It’s common symbol is simply a “7”. For example: A7 is an A dominant 7th chord.

    Below is the dominant 7th chord pattern we’ll be using for this lesson:

    If you look at the chart below you can see that in order to get an E7 chord out of the pattern we must play the pattern where the root falls on the 7th fret. The root note of this pattern
    just so happens to fall on the lowest note on the A string.

    In our example practice audio below we’ll be playing a blues

    progression in the key of A.

    Here is the progression we’ll use:

    [I][I][I][I][IV][IV][I][I][V][IV][I][V]

    These are the 3 chords you’ll need in order to follow along:

    The first chord is a A7 and it’s the “I” chord in the progression. The second chord is an D7 chord and it’s the “IV” chord in the progression. The third chord is E7 and it’s the “V”
    chord in the progression.