Nashville Shuffle – Bluegrass And Old-Time Music
Today I want to discuss what some refer to as the Nashville Shuffle. If you want to play bluegrass or old-time music, this is critical to understand. There are parallels across the instruments, and it’s used everywhere. In the realm of old-time and bluegrass, I believe it comes from the way the fiddle would impart drive and momentum into a tune.
I’ll mostly be using standard notation for this blog. At the same time, if you don’t read sheet music, that’s okay; you’ll still get something out of this. It is the RHYTHM that is important and not the notes!
Let’s take a look at the basic pattern. Think LONG SHORT-SHORT, LONG SHORT-SHORT. The accents will be on the 2nd and 4th beats of the measure.
For guitar players (and mandolin players), this translates into Down-Down-Up, Down-Down-up. For clawhammer banjo, it is your bum-ditty pattern. For fiddle, it is Down-UP-Down, Up-DOWN-Up (accents shown).
A great song to listen to to hear this directly is “Boil Them Cabbage Down.”
When I teach this in person, I show how it ties into foot tapping. The pick goes down when your foot hits the floor and goes up when your foot is in the air.
To really internalize this, you can do the following without an instrument. Tap your foot evenly and practice swinging your hand in the air, counting it out loud. DOOOOWN-DOWN-UP, making the first Down longer.
Nashville Shuffle In All 8th Notes
One can take this pattern and apply it to faster notes (all 8ths) and it will look like this.
The pattern is broken down as follows:
- Slur two notes
- Play two notes separate
- Slur two notes
- Play two notes separate
Despite adding a slur in, you’ll notice the bow or pick pattern is the same.
You now have a more interesting sound than simply picking or bowing every note. Without slurs, it can quickly turn into what I call the MUSICAL TYPEWRITER sound (void of accents).
When you have two notes that are slurred, by default the first note is naturally louder than the one you’re slurring into. This creates a new accent pattern.
You can add in (or leave out) the accenting on 2 and 4 from above, leading to a greater variety of articulation in your musical lines.
Here is a standard single-string banjo lick that I’ve now applied the Nashville Shuffle Pattern to:
For you fiddle players, here is a version of “Cripple Creek” that I’ve added Nashville Shuffle throughout in constant 8th notes.
Something like this is for practicing, not performance. Generally, we wouldn’t want to use the same articulation or rhythm throughout an entire song. What most musicians do is use this articulation pattern for a few measures and then go into a different one.
As always, if you have questions, feel free to contact me. I also teach banjo, guitar, and fiddle online via ZOOM anywhere in the world. I’m here to help!
