The shuffle feel, with its laid back swing, is so important to blues but so is the more driving and funky straight groove.
I have a cool riff to teach you for a groovy straight feel but before we do that let's look at the subtle but distinct difference in feel between swung and straight groove and a simple exercise for switching between the 2 feels.
As we discussed before, the shuffle feel is defined by its long short quality. Without getting into the theory of that again, basically the notes are unevenly spaced - a long followed by a short to give the distinct lolloping feel.
The straight feel by contrast has evenly spaced notes giving its driving quality.
Check out this video for a bit more context on that: https://youtu.be/VFSHnXrC8vA
Now here is a simple exercise to get to grips with these 2 feels and also how to get used to switching between them, which as I will get onto in the future is a way of really elevating your blues playing.
This one is in open D but you could do the same thing on the 5th and 3rd strings in open G.
You will see this is not the most exciting bit of tab in the world as nothing appears to change except the instruction that you see over bar 1 which denotes the shuffle feel. This changes to the “no Shuffle Feel” instruction on bar 5.
To really get a feel for this subtle change you need to see/hear it in action here in the video: https://youtu.be/4iMoerFyizc
To finish up, let's learn a cool straight feel riff in the G tuning that will come in useful.
I call this Pony Blues groove as it’s inspired by the Allman Brothers version of Pony Blues:
Here is the video lesson on how to play this: https://youtu.be/MVcM2MBQe1w
I hope you're feeling inspired to pick up your guitar this weekend and play some slide! Grab your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here to help…