Shuffle Rhythm features in this week’s Phantom Dancer with a set of 1930s shuffle rhythm by the exponents of the style, Jan Savitt and Henry Busse

The Phantom Dancer is your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV hosted by me, Greg Poppleton. Hear past Phantom Dancer online now at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/.

This show will be online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 22 February at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

SHUFFLE

Is one of three varieties of quaver (or eighth note) rhythms musicians use. The others are straight and swing. It’s based on triplet subdivisions of the beat and it’s easiest to understand it by hearing it, hence the shuffle rhythm videos and set featuring Jan Savitt and Henry Busse. Shuffle quavers alternate a long note and a short note. The long note falls on the beat and the short one in-between on the upbeat. It’s a quaver triplet without playing the middle note of the triplet. Think of the first two notes of the triplet being tied together or even missing the middle note of the triplet.

NOTATION

Mostly if a song uses shuffle it does it all through the song. To make it easier to read the notation the notes are written as straight quavers. At the start of the music there’ll be a note to read the quavers as shuffle quavers. A common marking for shuffle is a little equation written at the beginning expressing 2 quavers are to be played like a triplet with the first two notes tied. Or, the first two quavers of the triplet are written as a crochet. Another way to indicating shuffle is to simply write the word shuffle at the top of the music.

22 FEBRUARY PLAY LIST