Consider the humble shuffle rhythm. We establish a tempo and pedestrian beat, divide each beat into threes (triplets), play the first and last hits of each one, apply this rhythm to a 12-bar blues progression, and we’re off and running. But there’s a lot more to the art of the shuffle than first meets the ear.
Ex. 1a manifests the above method using alternating A5 and A6 chords to establish a typical one-bar I-chord rhythm figure. Examples 1b and 1c transpose the same figure to two different string groups to cover the IV and V chords (D and E, respectively). Both examples also utilize the “shorthand” method for notating shuffled eighth-notes via the inclusion of a two-eighths-equals-an-eighth-notetriplet (minus its second hit) indicator placed above the staff, which indicates that all written eighth-notes are to be played as shuffle eighths.
Some shuffles, such as Bill Doggett’s “Honky Tonk” (featuring Billy Butler on guitar), broke these root+5 and root+6 dyads into single notes by arpeggiating each one either lowto- high or high-to-low as shown in Ex. 2a. Ex. 2b adds a third root+b7 dyad to the mix on beat three.
Jumping back to the previous rhythm figure, Ex. 3a offers the first of three subtle variations on Ex. 1a. Here, we replace the second A6 hit in beats two and four with a premature return to A5. Ex. 3b features a pair of root+ b7 chords in place of beat three’s A5, and Ex. 3c blends this addition with the same chord pattern as Ex. 3a. Transpose each example to the IV and V chords and have at it.
In Texas-style shuffles, the