Flat Tire Shuffle

In those videos that I posted about recording, I said something about the “flat tire shuffle.” Jack, in one of her comments, asked “What’s a flat tire shuffle?”

In the realm of drumming, there are a zillion different shuffles: the swing, the Jazz shuffle, the double shuffle, the two-handed shuffle, the boogie, the humpty hump (ok, not that last one), etc. The flat tire shuffle takes the basic shuffle or Jazz pattern on the ride cymbal, whatever feels right on the bass, and something a little unusual on the snare drum. Rather than putting the snare drum accents on the downbeats of beats two and four (like most rock music), the snare plays on every 1/8th note off-beat. So instead of “one, TWO, three, FOUR, you get one AND two AND three AND four AND.

That probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. Here, try this: Dwight Yokum plays “The Pocket of a Clown.” Viola! The flat tire shuffle! The name comes from the sound: the sound a car tire makes when it’s rolling and flat.