OVER THE LAST five lessons, we’ve been exploring various ways in which to incorporate chromaticism and diminished chords into improvised solos within a standard 12-bar blues, using these approaches as musical bridges to “connect the dots” between the chords. The goal in bringing these elements into your soloing picture is to expand your harmonic vocabulary via these devices.
The third “bridge” I like to use to connect the chords together. Heard often in blues, jazz and pop, a turnaround is a short, often two-bar, chord progression occurring at the end of a verse, chorus or bridge that leads to the beginning of the next section. For example, the most common use of a turnaround in the 12-bar blues form is in bar 9, where the V (five) chord is usually played, you instead play the II (two major) or ii (two minor) chord for one bar before the V chord, which is then played in bar 10 and followed by the I (one) chord in bar 11. In the key of A, this would be Bm - E7 - A (or A7).
