A short guitar lesson by Lauren Bateman teaching a blues shuffle strumming pattern using three one-finger power chords (A5, D5, E5). The lesson contrasts straight eighth-note strumming with an eighth-note shuffle, introduces triplet counting ("1 and a 2 and a...") to feel the shuffle, practices removing the middle triplet downstroke to form the shuffle groove, and runs a slow 12-bar blues progression (4 A measures → 2 D → 2 A → E D → 2 A) while counting and demonstrating the rhythm.
Questions this video answers
March 30, 2022
A5, D5, E5 power chords (one-finger shapes on the 2nd fret)
Chapters
Foreign.
This lesson, we're going to be going over that quintessential blues guitar strumming pattern. But there's a very, very specific timing to it that we're going to go through step by step in this lesson right now.
So before I show you the strumming pattern, I just want to use three really, really simple chords. Absolute beginners could play these chords. It's going to be an A5 power chord, an E5 power chord, and a D5 power chord. All you need is one finger, and this finger is going to be moving on the second fret. All right? So we'll keep the chords easy because the strumming requires more of our focus than the chords. So for an A chord, it would be open a string finger on the second fret of the D string, and you play both of those together. Okay? So that's gonna be a five. To get to D5, you just move your first finger down one. We have an open D string and then second FRET on the third string. And then to play your E5 power chord, we have the open E string. Your second finger is going to be on that fifth fret, or, sorry, that fifth string at the second fret. So we have a 5. D5, E5. Okay. And those are the chords we're going to be using. Now, starting off with that a five chord, we are going to go through the strumming pattern for this shuffle. Now, it's called a shuffle. It's not a straight rhythm. Very, very different feel. And that's what's important about this blues guitar rhythm. So if I were to play a straight rhythm, I'm going to do eight down. So we're going to play it as eighth notes all down. So this would be a straight rhythm.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4.
It has a very driving feel to it versus a shuffle. The shuffle is going to sound like this.
It's like, ooh, Very, very different. It's still all downs. And it's technically what we would call an eighth note shuffle. But I'm going to show you a way to count this that might help you get the timing of it a little bit better. So first we're going to talk about a triplet. Because I find students a lot of times can understand a triplet before they can understand the shuff shuffle pattern. So a triplet is. We're gonna play three notes for one beat. So if an eighth note, we would go one and two and three and four. And triplets are one and a two and a three and A four and a. Kind of that waltz feel.
One and a two and a three.
And a four and a. And what I tell students to do is let's play it down for every single one of those counts. It's easy to do a count for everything, so harder when we start taking them away. But let's start by doing a count for everything. So we're going to do it down.
One and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and a three and a four and.
Okay, so let's do that again without me counting.
One more time.
All right, so hopefully now you have a little bit of a feel for that. What we're going to do is we're now going to take out that middle down. So the. And we're going to just cross it out and it's going to be 1.
A 2, a 3, a 4, a 1, a 2, a 3, a 4.
And if you need to start with everything and then take it out, we can do that too. So let's start with everything.
One and a two and a three and a four and a one, a two, a three, a four.
Now this might be one of those things that you're gonna have to go through over and over to get the timing and the feel of. But what I want to do is just go through a real quick 12 bar blues pattern with you guys. Or I'm gonna put the chords up here on the screen. This way, you know what order to play. Okay, we're going to do four A's followed by two D's followed by two A's. Then we're going to go E D. And then we're going to wrap it up on two A's. So let's practice putting that rhythm together now. And I'm going to go very slow this way. You got, well, not super slow. If you need to go slower, you can change the settings cog down there. But I'm going to go slow enough that you guys can maybe follow along with me and I'll count the first four measures and then I'll stop counting. All right, ready? Here we go.
A one, a two, a three, a four, a one, a two, a three or a four, a one, a 2, a 3, a 4, a 1, a 2, a 3, A 4.
So if you guys want more practice with this shuffle rhythm, you can go over there and check out my Kansas City guitar lesson. We'll be using these same chords and the shuffle rhythm to play through an entire song.
