Want a quick win in your next lesson?

Try something different with your students. And I don’t mean just choosing a new piece of music. I mean scrapping the music altogether and getting off the page.

It’s easier than you might think and kids love it.

It works for students of any age and level – beginners who only know a few notes and students who’ve been reading for years but have never made anything up. It’s perfect for a first lesson back, the last lesson of term or that student who’s lost their spark.

In this article I’ll show you exactly how I do it, with videos and free lesson plans you can use in your very next lesson.

Why the 12 bar blues?

The 12 bar blues is simply a chord progression using the 1, 4 and 5 chords in whatever major key you’re working.

It turns up in all sorts of music across all genres, and it’s a form every musician should be 100% familiar with.

I tell my students that if they ever want to play in a band, they’d better know the 12 bar blues (especially in E!). It’s one of THE most common things a group of musicians will jam along to when they first get together. Why? Because everyone understands the form, it’s easy to play on just about any instrument, it sounds good and it’s fun.

Kids love it because:

• there’s no music to read (so no stress)
• they can make things up as they go, within a simple framework
• there really aren’t any wrong notes
• and let’s face it, it sounds pretty cool.

It’s not just about jazz either. Every student will meet 12 bar blues pieces in their method books. If they understand the structure, the chords and improvising before they ever read one, they’ll have a much better grasp of the form when it’s time to read.

Best of all, it’s really easy to improvise over once you know a couple of tricks (which I’ll share below). Students quickly get lost in the magic of making up their own music – and you get to sit back and enjoy their first steps into jazz.

What you’ll need

• A piano (or two!)
• Something to write the chords on, like the student’s assignment book
• A backing track in C, played through a decent speaker (here’s what I use). I use the Blues Jam Room from my course – more on that below.
• My lesson plans for Lessons 1 and 2 – grab them free below

The two roles of the jazz pianist

I teach the blues in two steps:

1. First, the chord progression – chords in the right hand and a bass line in the left. This is known as “comping”.
2. Then I show them how easy it is to improvise – right hand only to start, higher up the piano, while I (or the band) comp.

Depending on the student, you’ll often get through both in one 30-minute lesson, so they can go home and explore both.

Let’s start with the chords.

The chords

All we need to know is three chords. I don’t go into a huge amount of theory at this stage – the whole point is some really quick wins, really fast.

In C major, number the notes of the scale: C is 1, D is 2, E is 3, F is 4 and so on. So the chords built on 1, 4 and 5 are:

• 1 chord (I) = C major (C E G)
• 4 chord (IV) = F major (F A C)
• 5 chord (V) = G major (G B D)

If your student hasn’t met chords yet, show them that a chord is a stack of three notes: play a note, skip a note, play the next note, skip a note, play the next note.

Musicians often write these chords as Roman numerals (I, IV and V). That’s what lets you take the blues into any key later on.

To make the 12 bar blues, we play the chords in this order, four beats in every bar. I write it down in their book:

I encourage fingers 1-3-5 for right-hand triads, but if that isn’t comfortable I’m happy with 1-2-4 or even 1-2-3. Offer a few options and ask them what feels best.

If their hands are too small for three notes, just play two: the bottom and middle notes (C and E of a C chord) with fingers 1 and 3. They’ll still sound great with the band.

Remember, this is a fun, creative activity designed to get students making music as quickly as possible. You might really want to fix the fingering now – I’d leave that for later and prioritise the music-making.

Adding the left hand

Just holding those chords will sound pretty rubbish on its own.

A simple way to make it sound jazzy is to have the student play a broken chord in the left hand, instead of holding the bass note. A C major triad held down low sounds muddy, but broken up, it sounds like a simple walking bass.

First, get them into position by playing the chords in both hands:

When that’s easy, break up the left-hand chords to make a simple walking bass: root, 3rd, 5th, 3rd.

Watch me show you how easy this is to teach:

Adding the band

Now that they can play the progression, it’s time to add some groove.

You don’t have to use a backing track to teach the blues, but I strongly encourage it. It brings the music and the experience to life. Jazz is, after all, mostly played in a group.

For my course, we built our own. The Blues Jam Room is a backing band that runs in your browser – no app to install. Pick a key, a feel and a tempo, and a real recorded piano, upright bass and drums start playing the 12 bars while the chart lights up bar by bar.

For a first go, I take the piano out of the band. The bass and drums keep your student steady, and they become the pianist in the band. Slow the tempo right down to match how fast they can change chords, then speed it up as they get more confident.

They’ll feel like they’re in a real band, and I guarantee they’ll love it.

If you’ve got two pianos, you can play along too, or improvise to show them what’s coming next.

The Blues Jam Room is included with Teaching the 12 Bar Blues. Any 12 bar blues backing track in C will get you started in the meantime.

Improvising

Improvising over this progression is dead easy. All you need is the C blues scale: C, E♭, F, F♯, G, B♭ and C.

Play it and you get that jazz feel straight away.

I use the chromatic scale fingering: thumb on the white notes and 3 on the black notes. If your student has learned the chromatic scale, this will feel easy.

For more visual students, I describe it as the roof of a house. The outside notes (C and E♭ at the bottom, B♭ and C at the top) make the sides of the roof, with the F, F♯ and G squashed together in the middle like the chimney.

Again, don’t get hung up on fingering. The jazz greats won’t turn in their graves (they’ll probably be impressed!).

When the student plays a “wrong” note – and they will – tell them how cool it sounded. Most jazz musicians will tell you there are no wrong notes in jazz, just some that sound better than others.

Watch me teach Lesson 2 in this video:

Practising the improv

Put the full band back in and have the student play the blues scale up and down in time with the pulse. Start with two beats on each note over one octave, then one beat per note, then two octaves.

When that feels comfortable, explain that they don’t have to play the notes in order. They can stop and start, repeat a couple of notes (or even just one!), skip notes and break out of the steady rhythm – as long as they’re still feeling the groove.

Hey presto: they’re improvising!

Students tend to stay in the middle of the piano when they start. While the band is playing, ask them to try improvising an octave or two higher.

What does it sound like? Does it give more space between the tune and the chords? Which do they prefer?

Asking questions like these keeps them listening.

Putting it together

Now your student can play the chords and improvise, it’s time for a mini ensemble: you, your student and the band.

If you have two pianos, get on the other one (or share one piano like a duet) and explain the format:

• First time through: teacher and student both play the chords (on one piano, the teacher plays the bass note and the student plays the chord)
• Second time: student improvises, teacher plays the chords
• Third time: teacher improvises, student plays the chords
• Final time: student’s choice!

Start the band and get grooving.

Give lots of encouragement while they improvise. Help them listen for patterns or “licks” – little melodic ideas that sound good and that they can repeat and build on. (There’s a whole lesson on this in the course: crushes, triplets and riffs that sound harder than they are.)

Homework

Now your student knows the basics, get them exploring at home:

• Send the band home. In the Blues Jam Room, one tap copies a link that opens the same key, tempo and band on any phone or laptop. Pop it in their practice notes.
• Record themselves playing the chords on a phone, then improvise over their own recording.
• Jam with the family. If someone at home plays an instrument, get your student to teach them the blues. It’s a great lesson in transposing, and a lot of fun.

One teacher sent me this after trying it:

“Today I received a video of a family comping! Two on the piano, one playing the bass 12 bar blues, the other improvising with the C blues scale, and their brother playing the same chords on the guitar.”

Where to next?

Once your student is hooked, there’s heaps more you can do with this simple framework. Here’s the order I usually teach it:

1. Triads in the right hand, octaves in the left
2. Triads in both hands
3. Break up the left-hand triad into a walking bass
4. Left-hand patterns: 5ths and 6ths, then 5th, 6th and flat 7th, then a boogie
5. Spice up the improvising with crushes, slides and triplets
6. Play the blues in other keys
7. Add “cooler” 7th and 9th chords in the right hand
8. Off-beat (syncopated) chords in the right hand – this one can be quite challenging!
9. Chords in the left hand while improvising in the right: trio style

Free lesson plans

Do you like having written instructions when you teach something for the first time?

I do!

I’ve put together lesson plans for Lessons 1 and 2 so you’ve got the perfect reference beside you while you teach. The two lessons normally fit into one 30-minute lesson, depending on your student’s age and ability.

Take it further with the full course

The videos and lesson plans above come from Lessons 1 and 2 of my 10-lesson course, Teaching the 12 Bar Blues. It takes you from three chords all the way to playing trio-style jazz, with a bonus lesson on Bags’ Groove, your student’s first jazz standard.

The course has just been completely refreshed, and now includes:

• The Blues Jam Room, set up for every lesson, with a QR code on each handout
• Lesson handouts, all redrawn, plus a Handout Generator that prints every page in any key (including B♭, E♭ and F versions so siblings can jam too)
• A companion workbook to fill in as you watch
• Ask Bronson, an AI blues coach who knows every lesson and can point you to the exact moment in the video
• The course podcast, so you can take it with you in the car

It’s a one-off purchase, or it’s included in a TopMusicPro Studio membership – along with 50+ more courses, live coaching and monthly sheet music. You can take 10% off a monthly or annual membership using the coupon code ILOVEBLUES at checkout.

I hope it brings as many smiles to your studio as it has to mine!