Rock and Blues Basics - Shuffle Patterns

Rock and Blues Basics - Shuffle Patterns Transcription

Hello, friends. Chris here, with beginningguitaronline.com. In this series of videos, we're going through rock and blues basics. These are fundamental skills on the guitar that will help you play rock music and blues music to your heart's content. All of my students and all of my friends know how crazy I am about scales. A person really can't get too much scale practice in their life. In previous videos, we've walked you through pentatonic scale patterns. 

What we're building on in these lessons is how to use those scales with musical intelligence. We're putting them into styles of music that we know and love, in this case, rock and blues. Most rock and blues music is based on our I-IV-V chord and played using major pentatonic patterns. Minor pentatonics too, but we'll get to that later. 

If we play through our pentatonic patterns, starting with the root note G, the root note C, and the root node D, you'll notice it instantly is recognizable as the blueprint for most rock and blues rhythm patterns you've heard. Let's play through it together. G. C. D.

G, C, and D Major pentatonic shapes for blues and rock shuffle patterns.

Think of that pattern as the blueprint for everything we're going to build upon. 

Variation 1 - Shuffle Rhythm

We're going to play some variations of that arpeggio structure by omitting some of the notes and changing some of the rhythms. Most of this will sound recognizable to your ear. Likely, you'll have a lot of "aha" moments. Adding a shuffle rhythm to Variation 1 here and taking out the second note of the pattern, we can get an instantly recognizable shuffle feel to this blues progression. 

Variation 1 is adding a shuffle pattern to the progression of G, C, and D Major pentatonic scales to make a basic blues shuffle.

You'll notice each pattern got played twice. Also, when I reached the top of the arpeggio pattern, I immediately jumped back down to the bottom and ascended back through it a second time on each chord. Let's take a closer look at our shuffle pattern. Key of G, one, two, ready, play.

Variation 2 - Rock ‘n’ Roll Rhythm

In Variation 2 here, we'll be playing the same patterns, but we'll be doing it with a more straightforward driving rhythm and only playing each note of the pattern once. It'll sound like this. Let's take a closer look at our driving rhythm, Variation 2. One note on each. One, two, ready, play.

In Variation 2 we use a more straight ahead rhythm with the same major pentatonic patterns to get a real old school rock ‘n’ roll shuffle.

Variation 3 - Flat Seven (b7) Pattern

Here, in Variation 3, we'll be omitting the octave note on the top. 

In our previous two variations, we took out the second note. In this one, we'll be taking out the octave note on the top and replacing it with our second finger, the seventh. This note, in the pattern, when played, is the seventh note, the flatted 7th, of every major key scale that you would build off of the root note. To demonstrate... 

And then, we'll come back down. Applying that pattern to each root note that we're building off of will really give it that classic rock and roll sound. Staying in the key of G, one, two, ready, play. 

And here, we see the change up close, adding the seventh and omitting the octave note on the top will sound like this. One, two, ready, play.

That flatted 7th really is a driving tone in rock, blues, and jazz music. We can play through it with a faster driving rhythm that accentuates that flatted 7th on the top and really sounds like some classic rock and roll greats. Here we go. One, two, ready, play.  

Variation 4 -

What I think makes these patterns so timeless and exciting are the subtle nuances in variation that different artists will use. The order of the chords will change once in a while, different chords will be put in, but this fundamental framework will help you play so much of this style of music as you get your rock feet off the ground. So many of those great rock and roll records, and classic guitar players, didn't play a lot of notes to get a whole lot of feeling across. In Variation 4, one way we can do that is by focusing on our slide technique. 

We'll be doing half-step slides into the root notes through this blues progression. I'm starting my finger just a half step (or one fret) below each root note and sliding forward as quickly as I can on the downstroke pluck. One, two, ready, play. 

Starting with your finger just a half step (or one fret) behind each root note, we then slide into the note on beats one and three in Variation 4.

Variation 5 - 7th Chord Triads

Building upon what we just played in that half-step slide variation, in this variation, we can introduce a seven-chord triad to emphasize the root note and the chord changes as they go by without playing an awful lot. 

Tricks like this allow you to play with other musicians with great success. It gives space for the bass player and the drummer to say what they want to say while you're jamming. One, two, ready, play.

Using the root, major 3rd, and flat seventh intervals, we can apply these dominant 7 triad shapes to our pattern to make space for the bass, drums, and any other instrumentalist you’re playing with.

Here's our chord built off of the G, we simply hop it all up one string to play the C7, and then, we're going to slide it two frets forward to play our D7. These are the chord frames that we're using when we're playing this dominant seven blues shuffle. One, two, ready, play. Spend time exploring the landscape of your fretboard. 

Applying the Patterns to Other Keys

The guitar is such a fantastic instrument for being able to take one bit of knowledge and do quite a lot with it. We can take what we've learned here and move it to different spots on our fretboard. For example, our seven-chord shuffle, instead of just being in the key of G, we can move it up two frets to the key of A.  

Moving up two frets to fret 5, we can apply the dominant seven triad patterns to the key of A in Variation 5A.

We can move it up another two frets to the key of B. All space relation between the pattern points stays the same, no matter where you move it.  

Moving up to the seventh fret, we can apply the dominant seven triad patterns to the key of B in Variation 5B.

I can move it up to the key of D.

Moving up to the tenth fret, we can apply the dominant seven triad patterns to the key of D in Variation 5C.

And likewise, all the pentatonic shuffle patterns that we've just worked through can be transposed completely. And here we go with a small demonstration of how we can transpose a lot of these patterns. I'll use our second variation to go through a few examples. Here we are in the key of A, a whole step up from our original example in G. One, two, ready, play.

Moving the original Variation 2 pattern up to the fifth fret enables us to play the example in the key of A major.

And move it up to fifth position, starting with my second finger on the sixth fret, I'm now in the key of B flat, a very handy key to be able to navigate if you're playing with brass instruments, for example. 

Moving the original Variation 2 pattern up to the sixth fret enables us to play the example in the key of Bb major.

Here, we've traveled all the way up the neck to ninth position, and we're playing the same pattern in the key of D. 

Moving the original Variation 2 pattern up to the tenth fret enables us to play the example in the key of D major.

As always, thanks for watching. Leave any comments or questions below and hit subscribe. You can also visit us at beginningguitaronline.com.