Southern Soul Shuffle drum pattern
A two-bar soul-blues shuffle: a shuffled hat pattern, a firm backbeat, a kick on 1 and 3 with shuffled pickups in bar two and a ghost-note skip before the backbeat. Press Play to hear it with a sampled drum kit at 112 BPM, change the tempo or swing, and follow every hit on the grid.
How to count the Southern Soul Shuffle
Count it as: 1 trip let 2 trip let 3 trip let 4 trip let · two bars. The pattern is a 2-bar phrase in 4/4 (two-bar eighth-note-triplet shuffle).
The Southern Soul Shuffle pattern, hit by hit
Each character is one step of the grid and each group is one beat. X is an accented hit, x a normal hit, o a quiet or ghost note and - a rest.
| Voice | Bar 1 | Bar 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Kick | X-- --- X-- --- | X-- --x X-- --x |
| Snare | --- X-- --- X-- | --- X-- --- X-- |
| Ghost snare | --- --- --o --- | --o --- --o --- |
| Closed hat | x-o x-o x-o x-o | x-o x-o x-o x-o |
Tempo and feel
Rolling and grown-up. The shuffle is steady rather than bouncy, and the backbeat is strong enough to carry a horn section. The default tempo is 112 BPM. It plays with 67% swing by default; move the Swing control toward 50% to hear it straight. Slow it down until every hit is controlled, then raise the tempo a few BPM at a time.
How to practise the Southern Soul Shuffle
Play the shuffled hat alone, 1 let 2 let, until it feels long-short. Add the kick on 1 and 3 and the backbeat on 2 and 4. Add the bar-two pickups and the ghost skips at whisper volume.
Variations to try next
Move the shuffle to the ride for the solo. Play the kick on all four beats. Drop the ghost skips for a plainer groove.
Where to hear this feel
Records in this family include Bobby Bland - Turn On Your Love Light and Z.Z. Hill - Down Home Blues. A drum-set study of the shuffle side of Southern soul and soul-blues, where a straight-ahead band shuffle carries a gospel-trained singer. The shuffle lives on the triplet grid with the let notes on the Swing control. It is authored for practice, not transcribed.