Joe Bonamassa: How To Play A Shuffle

Guitar World

A big part of blues is playing over a “shuffle” groove — a triplet-driven swing-eighths feel with a backbeat (accents on beats 2 and 4) — at various tempos. Let Joe Bonamassa give you a hand!

Transcript

00:00Hey guys, Joe Bonamassa again with the Les Paul and a Trainwreck and a reverb tank.

00:10We're talking about shuffles. And one of my favorite slow shuffles is Jeff Beck

00:18group off the record Truth, Rock My Plimsoll, a very English way of singing Rock Me Baby.

00:24And the riff is kind of...

00:54And Jeff always had those, you know, all those kind of like aggressive moments.

01:01And when you're playing like a slow shuffle, that's kind of, you can almost approach it like a slow blues.

01:07And, you know...

01:17You have a lot more time, you know.

01:19What I like to do sometimes, when I'm not making a mistake, is I like to use open strings, especially if you're playing in B, you know.

01:45You know?

01:49You know?

01:50You know, so it's

02:19kind of a like a British approach. It's a Gibbons approach. He used a lot of open strings.

02:49Like I said, it's like telling a story. And a lot of times with a slow shuffle, it's cool

03:03to like stinging out when you're just coming off the, you know, your turn to solo.

03:19Kind of like Albert Collins or, you know, any of the great blues players of many years

03:26ago, they just would sting one just to get your attention.

03:30You know, Gary Moore did that a lot, you know, started with a stinger.

03:49And then play fast. And, you know, use of octaves and dynamics, you know, because if you're coming

03:56off the five, you know, you're coming off the five.

04:03Oh, yeah.

04:30Like I said, there's many different approaches, like, you know, with a Les Paul or a 3-3-5

04:48or a Strat or a Telecaster, you know, Albert Collins would capo.

04:52So he had a lot of open strings and it tuned to an open chord.

04:56So you can experiment a lot with that.

04:59And you can also experiment with just playing with the band and listening.

05:03You know, one of the most important things in this style of music is listening to the other musicians around you and reacting.

05:11You know, if you hear something cool come from the keyboard player, then react to it.

05:16You know, same thing if there's horns or a bass or just, you know, some, you know, thing the drummer's doing.

05:22Go with them, you know, because that's the interaction that we all love and have learned from throughout the years.

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