What is a 16 bar blues?

Let’s start with the easy bit, what is a 12 bar blues? From here it’s easier to show the difference with a 16 bar blues.

Typically the 12 bar pattern is

1 1 1 1

4 4 1 1

5 4 1 1

If you are wondering what these numbers mean the simplest way to explain is to think of the 8 major tones in music  CDEFGABC, then number them 1234 and so on…the pattern shown relates to the number of bars played using those chords corresponding with those tones.

I’m probably not explaining it very well so let me show you. If we play an 12 bar blues in A, for example, we can number the chords as A1 B2 C3 D4 E5 F6 G7 A8. So now our 12 bar blues pattern comprises 4 bars of A, followed by 2 bars of D followed by 2 bars of A and so on which we can rewrite as

A A A A

D D A A

E D A A

The 16 bar blues is a variation on this pattern. Interestingly there seems to be numerous permutations and possibilities as to how a 16 bar blues pattern can be constructed.

The simplest is to make the first 4 bars into 8 bars like this

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

4 4 1 1 5 4 1 1

or we can repeat the 9th an 10th bars 3 times like this:

1 1 1 1 4 4 1 1

5 4 5 4 5 4 1 1

or we can repeat them twice like this:

1 1 1 1 4 4 1 1

5 4 5 4 1 1 1 1

or we can do this:

1 1 1 1 4 4 1 1

4 4 1 1 5 5 1 1

and there are more besides those.

Reminds me of something Robben Ford is meant to have said along the lines of ‘if it sounds good, play it!’

Here’s an example of what I think is a 16 bars blues, Blue Jean Blues by Billy Gibbons (of Z Z Top). I’ve got the ZZ Top version elsewhere but it’s a live version. I think the album version is more flattering to Billy and so I am going to include that here