I’ve often heard that this or that song is a shuffle, in different genres. But I’ve never been clear what exemplifies a shuffle. I think it’s a special beat, but I can’t pinpoint it, though I sometimes have the hunch that a certain song is a shuffle. There’s one interesting instance of one of the members of Gram Parsons And The Fallen Angels (not Gram himself, but I don’t know who exactly), introducing their song “That’s All It Took” as a “song that almost purely typifies the word ‘country shuffle’”. So what makes it a shuffle? And what’s the difference to a blues shuffle, or shuffles in other genres? Ideally, I’m looking for examples of shuffles from all genres.
Here’s Gram Parsons’ “That’s All It Took”
And here’s the preceding song on the album, where at the end of the track the band member makes the introduction to “That’s All It Took”
a rhythm where each beat of the measure is played as a triplet with the first and second parts of the triplet tied and the third part accented Shuffle Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
That’s it most probably, but doesn’t help me much because I’m not versed in musical theory, and I’m unable to translate the technical definition into a sound in my mind. That’s why examples would help, most useful would be the very basic beat.
It’s a rhythm that goes DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM instead of DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM. So the “DUMS” are a bit longer than the “das” Usually the DUMs are twice to three times as long as the das.
A shuffle has a beat that repeats a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note (or a dotted quarter followed by an eighth). It is most commonly associated with blues. I think it’s called a shuffle because it resembles a person planting a foot then dragging the other foot forward before the next step. You can hear it in the song you posted on every beat. Behind the 1-2-3-4 you can hear this 1–ba-2–ba-3–ba-4–ba. Kind of hard to convey without musical notation but I’m sure there are countless examples available. This example of a “country shuffle” really emphasizes the main notes of the beat, a more subtle shuffle. For a killer blues shuffle check out Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Pride and Joy.
There is a variant called the Purdie Shuffle (after drummer Bernard Purdie) where it is a quarter note triplet written as a quarter-note followed by an eighth note. It is the same idea as the first one but the second beat happens just a hair sooner and gives a more swinging feel.
. It’s that simple?
