How to Write a Blues Song

The blues is rooted in the expression of pain. After all, this uniquely American song form was born from the harsh existence of slaves on southern plantations. An amalgam of work songs, field hollers, spirituals and ballads, the blues evolved over the course of a century into the definition of musical lamentation. The blues commemorates the real, not the idealized. It sings of sadness, hardship, and suffering--most frequently at the hands of a man's job or his woman. It also could be bawdy, even humorous. And as the blues traveled northbound on the Mississippi, it influenced a variety of other genres and became a fundamental root of rock and roll.

The formula is deceptively simple. Blues was an oral tradition long before being committed to sheet music. Its practitioners were often not formally trained musicians, and its repetitive schemes reflect the mnemonic qualities required to pass down songs from one generation to another. But don't mistake its simplicity of form as being unsophisticated in expression. Many blues lyrics demonstrate a mastery of double entendre and metaphor. To be able to write a compelling story within the particular confines of the blues is an appreciable art in itself. Much like writing bound verse poetry, the key to the blues is about understanding the rules, first to work within them, then to earn the occasional right to break them.

Musical Characteristics: There are two defining characteristics of traditional blues. The first is the standard chord progression, based on a I-IV-V pattern (the tonic, subdominant, and dominant tones of the scale). The second is the use of flatted thirds, fifths and sevenths, known as the "blue notes," in the melody. As a result, blues relies heavily on the pentatonic scale, and can be written in either a major or minor key. In addition, a blues song can also be defined in terms of the number of measures, or bars, that comprise a full stanza. The most easily recognizable form is 12-bar. Also common to the genre are 8-bar and 16-bar schemes.