Blues Guitar Shuffle Rhythm.

So you've mastered the 12-bar blues or at least the concept of it and want to push your blues playing to the next level.

Well your in luck my friend!

The best way to liven up your playing is to learn the shuffle rhythm. I'm not sure where the name comes from, but the shuffle is a term used to describe the break up of a beat into two parts where the first is longer than the second.

The shuffle rhythm is based on an eighth note triplet rhythm. A triplet is when you use three notes in a given time space rather than two. In a standard 4/4 time signature where there is four quarter notes the eighth notes would be counted as...

1-&-2-&-3-&-4-& ... where the &'s are the eighth notes between each quarter. to fill the same time signature with eighth note triplets we would count as...

1-trip-let-2-trip-let-3-trip-let-4-trip-let ... where the trip's and let's are eighth notes totaling three per quarter note. So basically...

1-& = 1-trip-let

The blues shuffle is achieved by playing the first and third notes in a series of triplets. So if the count is...

1-trip-let-2-trip-let-3-trip-let-4-trip-let ... then you will be playing on all the down-beats or numbers and the let's. I have bolded the notes you should be striking to better illustrate.

1-trip-let-2-trip-let-3-trip-let-4-trip-let.

To hear what the shuffle rhythm really sounds like try listening to Led Zeppelin's - You Shook Me or Grateful Dead's - Truckin

I hope this has cleared up any confusion you may have been having with the blues guitar shuffle rhythm or maybe it made it worse. Remember you can always ask me a question by clicking the contact link at the bottom of the nav bar and sending an e-mail.

Ready to start playing the shuffle rhythm?

Check out this easy guitar lesson that rocks and download the tab on that page. Play it using the shuffle rhythm and you'll see how cool it really is.

If your serious about mastering the blues you owe it to yourself to check out PlayingThroughTheblues.info