This lesson is going to show you what’s actually happening harmonically in perhaps the most common blues turnaround you’ll hear played on the guitar, and how you can extrapolate this information to create many other turnarounds.

This is another instance of something that’s played by many a guitarist but few really know what they’re actually playing.

The reason that we ‘should’ know what we’re really playing is that knowing allows us to play this turnaround in a variety of different ways as I’ll illustrate in the lesson.

So here’s the turnaround in A:

What’s actually happening here is that this turnaround is outlining the following chord progression:

A7 - Adim7 - Dm6 - A

To play the turnaround in full chords we would play a ‘drop 2’ A7 voicing with the 3rd as the highest note, keep the A (tonic) in the bass and then drop the other 3 notes of the chord chromatically 2 steps before resolving to an A major chord. See below.

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 You can hear how this is a fuller/richer version of the turnaround which would be great to deploy in solo guitar arrangements or even as an alternative to the original.

Here are the turnaround options from these voicings that I like.

Below I have written chord diagrams for all 3 inversions of this progression. All you need do is keep the tonic (A) static and drop the other chord tones chromatically until you resolve to some sort of A major chord. I’ve also included the turnarounds you can derive from these inversions in the same way as our original turnaround was derived from the master chords A7 - Adim7 - Dm6 - A.

Below are the turnarounds you can derive from the above inversions in the same way as our original turnaround was derived from the master chords (A7 - Adim7 - Dm6 - A).

Below are the turnarounds you can derive from the above inversions in the same way as our original turnaround was derived from the master chords (A7 - Adim7 - Dm6 - A).

Below are the turnarounds you can derive from the above inversions in the same way as our original turnaround was derived from the master chords (A7 - Adim7 - Dm6 - A).

Try using these as alternatives to the way this turnaround is most commonly played.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this lesson. Do contact me if you have any questions.

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Thanks so much, James.