We like to revisit the 12-bar blues structure quite regularly in subsitute, simply because it’s such a flexible basis for experimentation, covering quite a wide stylistic range. in this case, we’re heading to the jazzier end of the blues spectrum. more specifically, we’re going to look at a few compact little shapes that either don’t have the root at the bottom, or don’t have a root at all.
In a full arrangement, it’s less important for the guitar to play full chord shapes with the root note on the bottom. The bass will probably play the root at least some of the time, so the musical context is already there. Even playing on your own,...
CHORD 4: D13 For the D7-C7G7-D7 turnaround, you could try two different D chords. For the first, just shift the previous C9 shape up two frets to D9, and then leave this D13 until the final bar. Or use D13 both times, it’s up to you!
CHORD 3: C9 Another shape without a root, and this would also make a perfectly normal Em7b5, but in the context of the 12-bar blues, our ears are more likely to hear it as some kind of C dominant chord.
CHORD 2: G9#5 In bar 4, this G9#5 creates extra tension before resolving to C7. There’s no G root here, but you should find that you ‘hear’ the missing context. You could also drop the note on the B string to the 9th fret (G7#5b9) or 8th fret (G7#5).
CHORD 1: G13 In our ‘vanilla’ progression, we’re assuming the standard I-IV-V 12-bar progression, with that G9 adding variety in bar 4. Let’s start by changing the standard G7 to this tasty inverted G13 (strictly speaking, a G7add6).