Shuffle along and get funky with Groove Of The Week #24

This week’s groove is a 2-bar funk shuffle with a little linear twist on beat 3 of the second bar. Let’s get to it!

Get The Groove

This groove is a 16th note triplet funk shuffle. Let’s start by looking at the funk shuffle hi-hat part.

To get the hi-hat funk shuffle pattern we play 16th note triplets but rest on all the “ti” to create the shuffle. It should sound like your regular 8th note shuffle – we’re just counting it differently. Once you get used to playing it you can just count the 8th note and feel the shuffled notes.

Now let’s add in the bass and snare drum to create the first bar of our shuffle.

Once you have that groove working and can play it smoothly then we can start work on the second bar.

The second bar features a linear idea on beat 3 of the bar. It’s simply alternating hi-hat & bass drum played over 16th note triplets. The rest of the groove is the same as the first bar.

Our final job is to put the two bars together to create the full groove.

Taking It Further

The main feature of this groove is the 16th note triplet between bass drum and hi-hat on beat 3 of the second bar. If you are playing this groove using the ride cymbal instead of the hi-hat, you can accent the right-hand part by using the bell of the ride cymbal.

You might want to use that idea sparingly, once or twice in a song might be enough.

Our next idea just moves the linear triplet idea to beat one of the second bar rather than beat 3.

You can also use this idea on beat 2 & 4, just hit the snare drum together with the first note on the cymbal. Try this groove:

And if you really want to go crazy with it, you could occasionally throw in this:

I hope you had fun with groove of the week #24. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message on the contact us page.