Delta and Hill Country blues in open-position E — the boogie, the drone, the turnaround, the slide, and the thumb. Where the Triplet Engine was the maths, this is where the maths came from: the shuffle is a triplet with the middle knocked out. Everything here swings.
"Mississippi blues" is two dialects, and the pack covers both. Knowing which one you're speaking at any moment is the whole game.
Moves through changes. 12-bar (roughly — bar counts were a suggestion), turnarounds, V-chords, slide answering the voice. Fingerstyle with the thumb as the drummer. Riffs 1, 2, 5 and 6 live here.
Doesn't change. That's the point. One chord, one riff, ten minutes, hypnosis. Groove over harmony, drone over resolution. Riffs 3 and 4 live here — and it's closer to your fusion vamp instincts than you'd think.
Quick-change 12-bar in E — the IV lands in bar 2, not bar 5, which is the Delta's signature impatience. All chords open position; the D-on-top E7 is the voicing that makes it sound like Mississippi rather than a pub band.
Open position, first three frets, no excuses. The whole Delta vocabulary is minor pentatonic with two pressure points: the ♭5 passing tone and the G→G♯ rub — the minor third bent or hammered toward the major third. That rub is the blues; everything else is furniture.
| Scale | Notes | Pressure Point | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| E Minor Pentatonic | E G A B D | — | The skeleton. All six riffs resolve inside it. |
| E Blues | E G A B♭ B D | B♭ — passing only, never parked on | The dirt. Chromatic slide A→B♭→B is the classic move. |
| The Delta Blend | E F♯ G G♯ A B C♯ D | G→G♯ — the rub, hammered or curled | Minor + major pentatonic merged. G♯ over E7, G over A7 — swap on the chord change and you sound like you know something. |
Session 01's metronome subdivided the triplet; this one removes its middle partial and lets you dial how hard the remainder leans. 66% is the textbook triplet shuffle. The old players sat anywhere between 58% and dead-on-66 depending on tempo and mood — use the slider to find where the pocket lives for you.
Two clicks per beat: the downbeat and the skip note. At 66% the skip lands exactly where triplet partial 3 lived in Session 01 — same grid, one light switched off. Practise every riff below against this at 66%, then try 60% at slower tempos and feel the groove flatten toward New Orleans.
Six pieces of load-bearing vocabulary, Delta and Hill Country both. All swung unless marked. All in open E. Numbers are frets; h hammer-on, p pull-off, / slide up, b quarter-bend (the curl, not a full bend).
The 5-to-6 shuffle under everything from Muddy to Hooker. Palm-mute the bass strings at the bridge, swing every pair, and keep the pick hand doing this while the fret hand does nothing else until it's autonomic. Shapes shown for E and A; for B, root on A-string 2 with D-string 4/6.
E7 (swung throughout) A7 e|-----------------------------|-----------------------------| B|-----------------------------|-----------------------------| G|-----------------------------|-----------------------------| D|-----------------------------|--2--2--4--4--2--2--4--4-----| A|--2--2--4--4--2--2--4--4-----|--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0-----| E|--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0-----|-----------------------------|TARGET · full 12-bar form from memory at 76 bpm, 66% swing, no looking
The descending line every Delta player owned a version of: D–C♯–C–B on the B string under a droning open high E, played in triplets (real ones — no shuffle shortcut here), landing on B7. This is bar 11–12 of the form, forever.
3 3 3 3 B7
e|--0--0--|--0--0--|--0--0--|--0--0--|---2-----|
B|--3-----|--2-----|--1-----|--0-----|---0-----|
G|--------|--------|--------|--------|---2-----|
D|--------|--------|--------|--------|---1-----|
A|--------|--------|--------|--------|---2-----|
E|--0-----|--------|--------|--------|---------|
D C♯ C B V — go again
TARGET · splice onto the end of Riff 1's form without dropping the swing
One chord, one riff, no destination. Low E rings the whole time — never damp it. The riff circles E minor pentatonic and comes home via the G on fret 3. Loop it for five minutes minimum; the point isn't the notes, it's what happens to your time feel around minute three.
(swung, low E ringing throughout, loop forever)
e|--------------------------------------------|
B|--------------------------------------------|
G|--------------------------------------------|
D|-----------0--2-----------------------------|
A|--0--0h2---------2--0-----------------------|
E|--0--0--------------------3--0--0-----------|
E A→B D E B A G E E
TARGET · 5 minutes unbroken against the engine at 60% swing, 70 bpm
The Catfish Blues / Rollin' Stone cell — the single most recycled riff in the tradition (Muddy took it electric, Hendrix took it to Mars). Call-and-response inside one bar: the low statement, the high answer, back down. Works as a one-chord vamp or dropped into any E7 bar of the form.
(swung)
e|----------------------------------|
B|--------------3--0----------------|
G|--------0--2--------2--0----------|
D|--2--------------------------2--0-|
A|----------------------------------|
E|--0-------------------------------|
E (E) G A D B A G E D
TARGET · alternate one bar of Riff 4 with one bar of Riff 3 without the seam showing
Elmore James's Dust My Broom figure adapted for standard tuning: slide into the 12th-fret double stop and hammer it in triplets, then fall down the box. Slide on the pinky, damp behind it with the index, intonate over the fret wire not behind it. Works acoustically without a slide too — just slide the fingers.
3 3 3 answer (swung)
e|--10/12--12--12--12--12--12--12--12--12--|--12------------------|
B|--10/12--12--12--12--12--12--12--12--12--|------15p12-----------|
G|------------------------------------------|------------14--12----|
D|------------------------------------------|--------------------14|
A|------------------------------------------|----------------------|
E|------------------------------------------|----------------------|
E D B B♭ G E
TARGET · stab clean in real triplets at 76 bpm · the ♭5 in the answer is passed, not parked
The Patton/Burnside engine: thumb hits the low E on every beat like a kick drum — no alternation, no mercy — while the fingers speak on top. The melody works the G→G♯ rub from the Delta Blend. This is the hardest thing in the pack and the most valuable: two players, one hand.
(swung; thumb = every beat, fingers on top) e|-----0--------3--0--------------------| B|--------3--------------0--------------| G|--------------------1------0--1-------| D|--------------------------------------| A|--------------------------------------| E|--0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----| ← thumb, unbroken E (E D) (G E) G♯ (B) G G♯TARGET · thumb survives the melody · 8 bars at 66 bpm with zero dropped bass notes
Same contract as Session 01 — one 25-minute block, fixed shape, five days a week. Run this pack standalone, or alternate days with the Triplet Engine: the shuffle and the triplet are the same muscle photographed from different angles.
Riff 1 through the full 12-bar form, engine at 66%. Non-negotiable, never skipped. The boogie is this pack's cell ladder.
Riff 2 in isolation ×8, then spliced onto the form ×4. Real triplets against the shuffle click — the same accent independence as Session 01's Ex 2.
Riff 3 or 4 (alternate days), one chord, no stopping. This is groove endurance training disguised as the easy bit.
Odd sessions: Riff 5 slide stabs. Even sessions: Riff 6 monotonic thumb. Opposing muscles again — attack versus independence.
Loop the form (or just drone on E7), improvise using only open position and the Delta Blend. Record every take. The constraint is the teacher.
One listen-back. One question: does it swing when nobody's counting? If any riff rushed the skip note, that riff drops 8 bpm next week.
+4 bpm per week, only on evidence — same ladder as Session 01. "Clean" here additionally means the swing percentage held steady: speeding up by straightening the shuffle is the classic cheat and it counts as a fail.
The thumb is the unit of truth. For Riff 6, nothing counts until the bass survives the melody. A perfect melody over a limping thumb is a failed take with good PR.
Five-minute rule. Hill Country material is only owned in five-minute unbroken stretches. Ninety seconds of drone is a riff; five minutes is a trance. The trance is the deliverable.