Here we’re learning the same blues riff as Marty and Chuck played in Johnny B. Goode, but we’re learning it for the 3 open power chords we covered in Level 2 Lesson 5. It’s the same riff for each chord, and feels the same when you play it, we just move down the strings as to change chord. Here is the riff for each chord:

The most common Blues shuffle riff

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12 bar blues in A

(Similar to Johnny Be Goode by Chuck Berry and Keep Your Hands To Yourself by Georgia Satellites, listen to these songs to get a feel for what we’re going for!)

So not a blues riff ‘in B’ as Marty said, here we’re in A. This means we use the 3 riffs we’ve just covered in the order written below.

HELP! A ‘12 bar’ what now?

This is the most common chord sequence in Blues and Rock n Roll songs. It uses all the chords we know so far in a longer sequence, known as a 12 bar blues. It's 12 bars long and used a lot in blues music as well as other genres such as rock and pop.

12 bar blues in A with Easy Blues Riff

To make this as easy as possible, play the riff in E, A and D SEPARATELY FIRST, then follow this as a guide so you know how many of each section to do:

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Other recommended songs with this Blues Riff!​

Johnny B. Goode - beginner acoustic

Eric Clapton - Tulsa Time beginner acoustic