Jazz · blues · 4/4 shuffle

Shuffle blues

120 bpm Loop: all
triplets

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Shuffle — the blues groove where every beat is a long-short pair (triplet eighths with the middle one silent). The kit plays it literally: hat or ride on every long-short, kick on 1 and 3, snare backbeat on 2 and 4. The piano doubles it: the right hand chops the chord on every shuffle eighth — long on the beat, short on the "and" — while the left hand plays the rock-and-roll 5–6–b7–6 walk (root held under G, A, Bb, A on C7), which Scivales shows as the left hand of Part III, Ex. 102 (in F; moved to C here). The bass walks 1–3–5–6.

Four bars of I–IV–I–V stand in for a twelve-bar; loop them and they already sound like a blues.

Listen for the gap inside each beat — the shuffle is defined by the silent middle triplet, and if the "and" drifts toward a straight eighth the feel collapses into rock. Compare boogie-woogie-lh, which is the same shuffle with the left hand doing all the work.

Practice: play the right-hand chop alone against the hat until the two long-shorts are identical, then add the left hand and keep it heavier than the chop.

Sources

  • left hand: Scivales, Jazz Piano: The Left Hand, Part III, Ex. 102 (bars 1-4, transposed F→C)
  • right hand, bass, drums: standard practice; no transcribed source

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