Let My Baby Ride - R.L. Burnside - Tutorial + Tab

 

 


In this video, I will show you how to play the guitar part from R.L. Burnside's song Let My Baby Ride. The guitar part is played on a guitar in standard tuning and is in 4/4 time. The guitar part is very short and repetitive, with just a 1 bar chord riff played over and over, and a 4 bar lick played in between. It is played on an electric guitar with a good bit of distortion to get a nice, crunchy sound.

Below are some tips to help you play this piece and links to download the tab.

Let My Baby Ride Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT

  • Muted Strings - When playing the guitar riff, some of the strings are played muted. These are represented by an X symbol on the tab. To play these, you rest your fretting hand lightly on the strings and play them so that they have a very muffled sound. Although this isn't a difficult technique, it can be hard to incorporate into this piece as the riff is played quite fast. By practising it slowly you should be able to incorporate these muted strings. If you are having difficulty though, you can just leave them out.

  • 3 string riff - I play the riff on the bottom 3 strings of the guitar as I feel it gives it a fuller sound. However, if you prefer, you can just play the 4th and 5th strings together to form a power chord. You may prefer the sound of that to playing all 3 strings at once.


 


  • Setting The Distortion - R.L. Burnside plays this on quite a heavily distorted guitar, which really lends to the overall sound of the music. To get a similar sound I woud recommend using a guitar with quite a hot humbucker pickup, and adding a good amount of gain in the amp settings.
 
This is about all I need to say about this piece. There isn't very much to learn here, and if you are used to playing more rock/metal orientated music on an electric guitar you should be able to learn this easily. If you are having any difficulty, just learn it at a slower tempo and then speed it up. Also, have a think about the guitar you use and your amp settings to get that nice, crunchy sound like R.L. Burnside.

Thanks for Reading,
Neil

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