A big part of blues is playing over a “shuffle” groove – a triplet-driven swing-eighths feel with a backbeat (accents on beats 2 and 4) – at various tempos. There are many great shuffle-based tunes.

In my last column, I introduced an approach to playing through a 12-bar blues shuffle in the key of E with some of my favorite licks to play over the IV (four) chord, A7, and the V (five) chord, B7.