Rock N' Roll Shuffle Rhythm (NOT for beginners)

Hi there, I've got a cool rock and roll shuffle groove that I wanna show you and I think you're gonna have a blast with. Let me show you what it looks like first.

I'm Tomas from Real Guitar Success. I know this looks a little difficult when you're first getting started but I am gonna break it down step by step so let's go ahead and get started.

First of all, make your basic bar chord. We're gonna make the bar chord across the 3rd fret with my first finger and I'm gonna make a form with my second and third that will call a 7th form. All together this makes a G7 bar chord. Now even if you're not really confident with bar chords yet we're gonna make this one a little bit easier because we're not gonna pressed down the whole time. Watch what I mean.

As you make the bar chord put your fingers in the right place. The third finger is on the fifth fret of the fifth string and my second finger is on the fourth fret that's the third string. Now don't press all the way down so it's just gonna sound like this right now. As you play the chord, you're just gonna press long enough to make a sound and then release. Now you'll noticed I also struck just the lower string so I wasn't worried about hitting these higher strings. Listen again. That's just the lower string and I pressed out my left hand at the same time with my right. This alone would be a great bar chord exercise.

So let's practice that and we're gonna add to it a groove. We will call this a shuffle rhythm groove. So a regular groove would be da, da, da, da, but the shuttle groove has a set of threes in motion like this - da da da or 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. Let's go ahead and try that together and don't worry about pressing down here we're just gonna use the basic mute sound. Ready go, one two three, one two three or you could say trip a let, trip a let, trip a let, trip a let so that's the basic groove and that's a good groove to kind of have under your bell. It takes some practice to really feel it but for now we'll count it out.

Now what we're gonna do is pressed down on the left hand just long enough for that first down part so it's daaa and then release. Again this is a great bar chord exercise and I'm not hitting the higher strings just the lower two or three. It doesn't really matter how many just aim even if you only hit one.

Okay next step we're gonna add to that. I'm gonna do two hits on the full bar chord one so it's 1, 2, 3, - 1, 2, 3, but on the second hit I'm gonna move my left hand. Watch for a minute. I'm gonna flatten out my third finger and press it across the seventh fret. Now I'm pressing across the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd strings. And again, don't worry about pressing too hard right now. I'm gonna try and get a little sound but don't worry about getting your perfect sound.

You'll notice my first knuckle is buckled in and my second knuckle is sticking up in the air not using my second finger and the first finger is all the way across the 3rd fret so it's going to look like this now. You're gonna start here with the G7 bar chord and then buckle down and make a C bar chord that's actually called a 5th root C bar chord. Fifth root because the name is on the 5th string that's a C note on the 5th string. So back to the G7 and you strike once when you buckle down so let's try that together it's gonna look like this. Try it with me now, ready go. Try it again ready go. Going on to the next step.

Now with the upstroke you hit some of the strings. Don't worry about hitting in them all but at least some and leave all these fingers off only pressing down with your first finger on the 3rd fret so watch so far. Down, down, buckle and then up and then make your G7 chord again and you add one more triplets strum to the end so it's down, down, buckle, up stroke and then down, down, down that's one groove. Again down, down, buckle down and finished it off with the da da da.

Now let's try that together nice and slow and go even slower than that so we can just try it. This is a walk through. Don't expect to get it anywhere close to perfect just like a walk through to get a feel of how it's gonna be then you're gonna practice it. Here we go 1, 2 I'll come forward 3, 4 four here we go 1 - that was one groove. Let's do it again ready go - da, da, down, up, pa, pa, one more time ready go - da, da, down.

Okay, now again don't worry about getting this perfect but work on it a little bit each day and it will get better and better. I want to give you some inspiration. I want to show you a little bit how we use this. By the way, it's used in both blues and rock. Slower in blues like this and rock usually. So let me show you a basic groove. Okay it's time for you to get to work.