Last month we presented the first part of our lesson in navigating the last four bars of a blues progression — the so-called “blues turnaround” — in the styles of T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Albert King, Peter Green and Eric Clapton. We conclude our study this month with a look at how guitar greats Carlos Santana, Gary Moore, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robben Ford and Larry Carlton create soulful and harmonically effective melodies in their turnarounds, adding melodic and harmonic interest and resolution that leads the song back to the start of a new verse.
As we saw last month, a turnaround is usually improvised and generally occurs in the last two bars of a blues or jazz standard. In the context of a 12-bar blues progression, the vocal melody typically concludes at the beginning of the 10th bar, so instead of simply sitting on the tonic, or “one,” chord for two more bars, a chordal turnaround is inserted in bars 11 and 12 to provide interest and forward momentum for the progression to loop back to its start.
Turnaround licks are frequently played over four chords (two per bar), usually I-IV-I-V or the jazzier I-VI-ii-V (lowercase Roman numerals indicate minor-type chords), but there are many variations, as these lessons demonstrate. The chord types may be diatonic or non-diatonic (based on the parent scale of the key, or not) and are also influenced by the style of blues (major versus minor).
As in last month’s lesson, each player will be represented here with three examples that cover major and minor keys and feature a range of grooves and tempos. In addition, because some licks can be interchanged between major and minor keys, our examples will start on the same root note. Once again, the examples are presented as they would occur