How to Play Shuffle Feel Rhythm on Guitar

Welcome back! It is time for our weekly online blues guitar lessons. Blues sounds way better with a shuffle feel. A shuffle feel is basically a triplet thing; you grab a quarter note and an eighth note, triplet them and you have a shuffle sound. To be more specific, count “1, 2, 3” in every beat; play the quarter for the duration of “1, 2” and the eighth for the duration of “3”. That’s a shuffle feel. There many other elements that put together bring a more bluesy type of sound to a riff; for instance, a pentatonic or blues scale combined with a mixolydian scale. These 2 scales put together sound so much like a blues scale, that it’s just impossible to get the blues sound out of them; if you use them together, your song will sound like a blues song. I wanna show you a great example in which we replace a normal A7 chord with a shuffle rhythm that uses the pentatonic scale and the mixolydian scale; let’s take a look:

Shuffle Feel Rhythm

Shuffle Feel Rhythm Doing chromatic lines that move down while holding a higher note is also very common. As you can see on the 2nd bar of the lick. We can also transpose this lick up or down to another key: online-blues-guitar-lessons_2.png My favorite one is in the key of E: online-blues-guitar-lessons_3.png The key of E is my favorite key for Blues because of the open strings. It sounds so good when you are playing something somewhere else and suddenly come back to the open string. For this exercise I recommend you use a hybrid picking technique. If you try to use only a pick, it will be a little bit soulless and maybe even harder. This type of riffs are definitely made for a more crunchy sound and to use your fingers. Open strings love the sound of your fingers. For the 2nd bar of each riff, I recommend a down stroke with the pick. This is all for today. I hope you’ve enjoyed How to Play Shuffle Feel Rhythm on Guitar and please remember to check out our entire database of videos here:

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