ptab Shufflin' Sam Pat KirtleyKentucky GuitarÈ Pat Kirtley Pat KirtleyCraig Rogers {Tellurian}craigrogers706@hotmail.comÿ| When writing a guitar song, I often see some mental picture of a scene or action that goes with the music. Sometimes that imagery leads to a title for the song. The scene for this one turned out to be a busy corner in a city, with a street performer doing a shuffle, and collecting coins in a jar for his efforts. I called him and the song"Shufflin' Sam." Later I read in a blues history book that there was in real life, a blues performer who went by the moniker "Washboard Sam" and later "Shufflin' Sam" around Memphis in the 1930's. I first became acquainted with the tuning EADEAE in order to play an arrangement by Davey Graham of the Irish traditional tune Lord Mayo. When I first tuned my guitar this way in order to do that, it seemed strange, even though I had already been using various other alternate tunings for years. Lord Mayo sounded very pleasant, and wasn't too hard to learn, but my initial attempts to do anything else in the tuning were frustrating. Then I started playing a little country groove in the key of A; something like Mississippi John Hurt's "Make Me Down A Pallet." I really liked what I could do rhythmically with the available open strings. And, I liked the challenges: linear lead lines proved virtually impossible, and there was no such thing as a bar chord. After experimenting awhile I came up with an arrangement of Old Joe Clark that made that war-horse of a tune sound new and interesting. After a year or so, I had written or arranged maybe 20 tunes in EADEAE. This piece has a structure similar to songs like "Alabama Jubilee" or "Cannonball Rag" - it's native to one key {here A major}, but starts off in another {F#}. The key changes in the verse to form a familiar cycle: F# - B- E- A. The bridge is in D. The intro is a repeating pattern that moves back a fret at a time. At the beginning of the verse {measure 10}, try to use your left hand thumb to fret the 6th string bass note F# in the first position. Also at these measures there is a right hand forward roll using three fingers {I - M - R}. There is a technique I use in playing this song that's hard to describe in tablature, but not hard to play. It is similar to a clawhammer banjo pattern, and you will first encounter it at the end of the intro in measure 8. You do it {right hand} by first playing the bass note with the thumb and then brushing downwards lightly across strings 4 through 1 with the topside of your first or second finger, and then back acoss the first string with the tip of that finger. I find myself using this little lick often when I play in EADEAE tuning, maybe because I love clawhammer banjo music, and the open - 5th sound of E - A - E reminds me of it. Another right hand device used occasionally in this song is simply a forward brush across the strings with the topside of the fingers. 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