Rock Me Babe (Tutorial + Tab)




Rock Me Babe is an old traditional blues tune. It is a standard 12 bar blues played in the Key of E in 4/4 time. It is a fingerstyle piece played on a guitar in standard tuning. Above is a video of me playing the tune along with the tab. In this post I will discuss how to play this tune.

The tune is quite straightforward to play and it is a good introduction to playing fingerstyle blues in the Key of E.

Here is the tab for the music

Rock Me Babe Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT




Fast or Slow


I play this tune quite fast because I like the bouncy, vibrant feel it has when played at this speed. However, many others play it a lot slower. It is up to your own preference how fast you play it. All I would recommend is that you learn it at a slowly at first until you have mastered it, and then speed it up later if you desire.

Get Those Fingers Going


  • The tune utilises a regular bass note picking pattern played with the thumb. This is played on the 5th and 6th strings with every bass note played on the beat of the bar. Here is a section of the tune with the bass notes, which are played with the thumb, outlined in red.



  • The majority of the melody line is played on the higher strings of the guitar and you use your index, middle and ring fingers on your picking hand for this. If you prefer to play with just your index and middle fingers, this is also ok but Bar 16 will have to be altered slightly. The image below shows the section which requires use of all your fingers. Below it it is a revised section which only requires the index and middle fingers.




  • Occasionally, the melody line needs to be played on the lower strings of the guitar. You can use the thumb or the index finger to play these depending on your preference. Below shows the first four bars of the tune. The highlighted notes can be played with either the thumb or index finger depending on your preference. Similar phrases occur throughout the tune.
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  • On Bar 16 you will have to use your thumb to play the melody line as it comes down to the 6th string. I have highlighted below the notes I recommend are played with the thumb in this phrase.


  • On Bar 21 I would recommend playing the first phrase (highlighted in the image below) using a barre stretching from string 5 to 1. I would also advise when you release the barre, to play the second section of this bar, that you keep your index finger anchored on fret 2 of the 5th string to keep the bass notes ringing out.





Apart from these points, the tune should be relatively straightforward to play.


Thanks for Reading,
Neil

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