Excerpts from LEARN BOOGIE WOOGIE PIANO

Learn Some Two-Bar Figures (excerpt)

Explanation

Very frequently in boogie woogie, two-bar figures are used in a repetitive fashion. They are used in at least two different ways:

They are simply repeated over and over for an entire 12-bar chorus. This means that the figure is repeated six times for a chorus. It can also mean that it is repeated four times in a chorus and that a turnaround is played for the last four bars of the chorus.
They can be alternated with other melodic material. You learn how to use two-bar figures in this way in the next chapter.

When you use two-bar figures in the first way, you have a choice when the chord changes to the subdominant in bars 5-6 and the dominant in bars 9-10. You may:

Play the figure without any change. In this case, a pleasing dissonance might occur.

Transpose the figure to use the notes of the new chord.

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