Hey, how you doing? Justin here; today we're gonna gonna check out a 12-Bar-Blues
Shuffle riff - that's the best name I can come up with this; I'm so surprised that
there's not actually a proper name for this stylistic device, 'cause it's used
all of the time in the Blues'; super super common; you're gonna hear it all the time,
and there're loads of really funky variations that you can get into as well; I don't
mean funky like 'funk' music, but just cool interesting variations that we're
gonna explore; I'll give you plenty of food on this coming up but we got to
start simple, and we're gonna start learning a straight ahead 12-Bar-Blues
Shuffle riff in the key of 'A'; let me play it through for you once, first of
all, so you can see what it is that we're gonna learn. [Playing 12-Bar-Blues]
that's it! Regular 12-Bar-Blues! You can do 'quick-change', you can do 'slow-change'
but we're gonna start with 'Standard' one. Now, first thing to realize is, we're
only playing two notes at a time; so, for the 'A' chord, 1st finger is going down on
the fourth string, second fret; but the two strings we're gonna play, are the open
fifth string, and that note with the 1st finger on it at the fourth string, ok?
So, your first thing you wanna do is, get your pick used-to just playing those two
notes; now, the underneath of the 1st finger is lifted up, so, actually all of
the rest of those are muted as well, so if I strum all of them, I'm still only getting
those at thickest two, except for the thickest string. The thickest string, you
just wanna not pick; it's not gonna sound terribly if do pick it, but much that, try
not to, if you can. So, we're gonna play those first two notes twice. '1' and,
then 3rd finger is gonna go down in the fourth fret on the same string as the 1st
finger; 1st finger is not gonna lift up, ok? So leave 1st finger where it is, then 3rd
finger is gonna go down on the fourth fret; you play that twice, and then back
to the 1st finger; then with the 3rd finger [playing 12-Bar-Blues]. You want to
start-off, this is straight now, isn't it? I'm not doing any shuffle [playing Blues]
"1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &"; that would be your first step; just being able to do that, just
picking the right strings [playing Blues], getting the 3rd finger accurately down on
the right fret. Now, as soon as you can do that, you've got the finger motion right,
and you're picking the right strings, you wanna start thinking about incorporating
that shuffle rhythm; so, basically the '&' is gonna be a little late; so we end up
with this, "1 &2 &3 &4 &1 &2 &3 &4 &", now, my teacher, when I learned this, I
was about 12 years old, 'Pete Thomson', big shoutout to Pete Thomson there, he
called it the "Chunka Chunka Blues", now, if you say the over and over, "chunka
chunka, chunka chunka, dik a' dik, dik a' dik", chunka chunka, chunka chunka,
[playing Blues], so it actually a really good descriptive word, for what it is,
that you're doing; if you're just saying, "chunka chunka, chunka chunka",
[muted strumming], you get that feeling of the shuffle, ok? So, you don't have
to use that, it's not officially called the "Chunka Chunka Blues", if you look
it up anywhere, or say to your friend, "I wanna play Chunka Chunka Blues", they
might think, you're a bit weird; doesn't matter! You can use it, 'cause it will
help you remember, to get that rhythm; so, if you got your guitar with you now, let's
have a play-along together; I'm just gonna play through few times, nice and slow, for
you to make sure, you get that right feeling; it's really important! If you can,
I would recommend counting along, so actually going like, 1 &2 &3 &4 &; just
because we've got a set number of bars, it will be, kind of, helpful, if you count
along; if you've struggled with it right at the beginning, doesn't matter too much,
you probably gonna find, you wanna do that at some point. Let's have a play-along.
3, 4... 1 &2 &3 &4 &1 &2 &3 &4 &1 &2 &3 &4 &1 &2 &3 &4 &; it's really important that
you try and make it feel right, try and find that shuffle in your being. Hopefully,
you're listening to some Blues, that's a really important part of all of this. If
you're not listening to Blues; not listening to what it should sounds like,
you're probably not gonna get it right, so make sure you do, you know, get yourself a
playlist of some great Blues songs, and try and absorb that, that feel. Now, in a
Standard 12-bar-Blues, we do four bars of 'A', so if we've got 1 &2 &3 &4 &; that's
one bar. So, we'll play that four times, and then we move to a 'D'. Now, to get
to a 'D' chord, we move everything down one string, so 1st finger moves down on to
the 3rd string; the notes that we play now will be the middle two strings [playing
Blues], here's your 'D', we do that for two bars, and then go back to 'A'. Notice
that the 1st finger can, kind of, move over, while the 3rd finger is down,
first thing you're gonna , kind of, sneak over to the fourth string. We do two bars
of 'A' again; then we go down to 'E' for one bar. Now, 'E', 1st finger is gonna go
down on the fifth string, and you're gonna play, the thickest string and the fifth
string [playing Blues] for one bar; then 1st finger's got to jump all of the way
down to the second fret on the third string, and the picking hand has to
negotiate, from playing the thickest two strings, to playing the middle two strings,
for the 'D' for one bar, [playing Blues] then back to 'A', and down to 'E'. Let's
play it once through, here we go; from this start. 1.......2.......3.......4.......
over to the 'D' now, 1.......2...... and back to 'A', 2 &3 &4, second bar [playing
Blues], now one bar each 'E'; a big jump to 'D' [playing Blues] and back to 'A',
and down to 'E', 2 &3 &4, and you're through. So, the first things to think
about with this one is, practicing the groove just on the 'A', ok? Before you
try and play the whole thing, just work on the shuffle, work on picking the right
strings; a real common thing is that the pick wants to play just the string that
the finger is on. So, a little bit, you got to reprograming your brain there, to
play the one string thicker than the one that your finger is on, and the one that
your finger's on, together; it's just a little push with the finger, making sure
that the underneath of that 1st finger is muting the other strings underneath as
well; that's a fairly important part of it. Once you've got that together, have a
go at counting, and then see if you can count the bars, instead of counting 1,2,3,4
each time, you count 1 __ __ __, 2 __ __ __, 3 _; to be able to count there, you got
four bars on the 'A', excuse me, four bars on the 'A', two bars on the 'D', two bars
on the 'A', then 'E', 'D', 'A', 'E'; just one bar each. The hardest part is usually
the skip from the 'E' chord to the 'D' chord, where 1st finger has to find its
way from the fifth string to the third string, in a bit of a jump, and the picking
hand has to change the strings it's picking as well; that's the hardest part, usually,
for most people. Now, again, using a little backing track is a really helpful way of
doing it. There is a kind of a lower limit here; if you go too slowly, it becomes
kind of harder, so, you wanna find that kind of, middle ground, maybe 60, 70 beats
per minute, maybe even 80, so you find, most people have a tempo that, kind of,
works for them with the shuffle, that's the easiest. I've had students that find
it really difficult to do it slow, like 50 or 60, but they're fine on like, 80 or
90, which is, kind of, weird but, yeah. Find the tempo that you feel is easiest,
as a place to start off with. You'll probably find that once you can do it,
you just be playing along and going, "oh yeah, about this speed! This is a good
speed; let's do it around this speed", and see if you can then make your way
through. Either use a metronome, use a backing track; doesn't really matter,
but you do want something in time, because longer term, you wanna play it with somebody
else, and if you stop and start, really it's off-putting; if you're jamming with
somebody and they're playing lead line, and then you start stopping, it's like,
"oh, God", that's a bit weird; it's one of the reasons why I put so much emphasis on
playing along with backing tracks in this course, because, really, it teaches you
the importance of staying in time all, you know, all the time. Definitely, if you're
ever playing with a band, you can't like, have a chord change, it's a bit, I'll just
go, "oh, just stop, hang on! Just let me get that chord; okay, let's go again". So,
you know, developing that sense of time is really really important, and this shuffle,
there're so many different songs that use the same thing in so many different ways.
Just to give you a little taste of what's to come, but once you got this together
[playing Blues], you can add a little mute [playing Blues with muted strings]; that
sounds pretty cool straight away; you can change it [playing Blues], you can have
like [playing Blues]; I mean, there are so many fun things here; different tempos
that, you know, you can have like [playing Blues]; we can have [playing Blues]. It,
it really is, there's so much cool stuff going on, on here for different songs;
this 12-Bar form is used by thousands of songs at different speeds, in different
keys, different, kind of, riffs involved with each one. So, by learning the basic
form, you're, kind of, opening up this whole space, where there's lots of
different fun stuff to explore; I'm sure, I hope I can encourage you to get into
Blues, even if you feel like, you're more of a pop person, or a rock person, or a
folky dude, or whatever, you know, whatever style it is that you think you
like, if you're not into Blues, 'cause lots of people, "I don't need Blues"; as
a fun thing as a guitar player, Blues is hard to beat! I think! Fingerstyle, all of
that sort of stuff, is great fun as well, and I love rock stuff, and I love, I like
music, and I'm in love with all sorts of music, but Blues has a special place on
that, the fact that it is an improvised form, where you can play around with it,
you don't, you're not, kind of, tied into doing it a set way, and yeah, it's just
loads of fun. I hope, I can inspire you to, at least, check it out. Do checkout the
'Spotify' playlist that I offer as well, because they're, it's just, I wanna
introduce you to great example of Blues; what I'd hate for you to do is, you know,
go on some random playlist and go like, "umm, it's not really very good", and
actually, I might have thought the same, if it wasn't very good Blues; you wanna
be listening to the very best stuff, you can find. Anyway, enough of my ramblings,
I'll see you for plenty more very soon, you all take care of yourselves, bye bye.