12-bar rehearsal — one full lap without stopping

Today is the rehearsal. The pieces from the last three days — the boogie, the turnaround, the intro/ending — get strung into one full lap of 12 bars. Nothing new. There's just one goal: complete a full lap without stopping.

Let's open the map of the 12-bar blues. A blues is a 12-square road where A7, D7, and E7 circle in a fixed order. Bars 1–4 are A7·D7·A7·A7, bars 5–8 are D7·D7·A7·A7, and bars 9–12 are the turnaround you learned by yesterday, E7·D7·A7·E7. The first eight bars tell the story; the last four tie the knot and send you back to the top.

The heart of a rehearsal is just one thing: don't stop even when you slip. A wrong note, a slightly late chord — don't break the flow, keep it rolling. In real playing, the moment you stop sounds louder than the mistake. So today, aim not for perfection but for getting all the way around. Four weeks ago even changing one chord was a stretch; now you're about to circle all twelve squares in one flow. Roll one clean lap without stopping today, and tomorrow's recording gets far easier.

First let's lay out the whole 12-bar map as chords. One chord per bar.

▶ BPM 80, shuffle. Skim the 12 bars, one chord per whole note. A7-D7-A7-A7 / D7-D7-A7-A7 / E7-D7-A7-E7 — that's the road of the blues.

Now check the last four bars, the turnaround, again as a boogie. This is the trickiest stretch of the 12, so get it into your hands separately.

▶ BPM 80, shuffle. E7-D7-A7-E7. Bars 9–12 as a boogie. The last E7 carries you back into bar 1.

Once these four bars are smooth, a full lap of 12 bars is nearly complete.

0–10 min · Warm-up BPM 65. Warm your hand and wake the shuffle with one bar of the A7 boogie. Check with your foot that the long-short is alive.

▶ BPM 65, shuffle. One bar of A7 boogie. Today's starting point.

Now roll the first four bars of the 12 in a row. The order is A7 → D7 → A7 → A7.

▶ BPM 80, shuffle. Bars 1–4. With the quick change, D7 drops in for bar 2, then A7 returns.

10–20 min · Brain training (today's target = the 12-bar map) Close your eyes and trace the 12-bar order one lap in your head. Picture each spot where the chord changes ahead of time.

20–40 min · Real full 12 bars (BPM 80) Circle the 12 bars once without stopping, no intro. Even when you slip, don't break the flow — keep rolling.

40–50 min · Recording / self-feedback (recommended) Record one lap of 12 bars: did you circle all the way through with no stops.

Today's completion criteria: You can roll all 12 bars in one full run-through without stopping.

The common mistakes in a rehearsal. The most common is the leap from bar 8 to bar 9, A7 to E7.

▶ BPM 80, shuffle. From bar 8's A7 to bar 9's E7. Your hand moves the most here, so prepare early.

• You freeze at bars 8→9. The jump from A7 to E7 often breaks. Picture the root string dropping from the 5th to the 6th early.
• The tempo wanders. Easy bars speed up, hard bars slow down. Hold the beat with your foot.
• Starting over when you slip. Don't stop — just carry on. The goal is a full lap.
• Missing the quick change. It's easy to skip the D7 in bar 2. Check the map with your eyes once more.