Blues and shuffle drum patterns: the shuffle, Texas, half-time, slow blues, MIDI

How a blues and shuffle beat is built

The kick

The snare

A ride

Then a variation: Texas shuffle

Count the bar in twelve, three steps a beat. The blues shuffle: ride on the first and third step of every beat, that is steps 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 12; kick on steps 1 and 7, beats one and three; snare on 4 and 10, beats two and four; 120 BPM. The middle step of every beat is empty, and that hole is the shuffle. The Texas shuffle puts kicks on every beat and lets the snare play the shuffle with the ride: snare on two and four, the rim on the ride's other hits. The half-time shuffle, often called the Purdie shuffle after the drummer who made it famous, keeps the snare on step 7 only, puts a rim ghost on the middle step of every beat, the one the shuffle leaves empty, and the kick on one and the last triplet of two; at 96 it is the groove behind a dozen classic records. Slow blues at 60 fills all twelve steps on the ride, which is the 12/8 feel, with a rim on the last triplet of two and four. Jump blues at 170 adds the hat on two and four and a kick on every beat. Blues rock goes back to sixteen steps and straight eighths at 130. The two-bar pattern ends on a snare pickup and crashes the top of the twelve.

More drum patterns

Questions.

What swing setting is a shuffle?

None here. The grid's swing control delays the odd sixteenths, and a shuffle is swung eighths, which that never reaches: even at 66 the offbeat lands short of the triplet. These patterns use twelve steps to the bar instead, so the long-short is exact. On the sixteen-step grid, swing at 66 gives you a sixteenth-note shuffle, the hip hop and garage kind.

What is the half-time shuffle?

A shuffle with the snare on beat three only and quiet ghost notes filling the middle of every beat, so the bar feels slow and busy at once. Named after Bernard Purdie and copied everywhere since. On the grid, the rim row plays the ghosts.

How do I count a 12-bar blues on the grid?

Each pattern here is one bar; loop it twelve times with the chord changes. The two-bar pattern has the turnaround at the end, so play it for bars 11 and 12 and the crash lands on the top of the next twelve.

Blues and shuffle drum patterns.