St Louis Blues - John Fahey - Tutorial + Free Tab

 

In this video I want to play through a version of St Louis Blues based on John Fahey's version. St Louis Blues is a famous jazz piece in the blues style and has been covered numerous times. John Fahey's version is a fingerstyle guitar version and the version I play here is close to Fahey's recording. In the video, I will play through the music, then have a look at the structure of the music. I will also give some playing tips on some of the trickier sections of music which might trip you up when playing. Lastly, I will play through the music slower and put the tab on screen.

The music is mostly is in 4/4 time, it is in the Key of D and is played on a guitar in Dropped D tuning.

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

St Louis Blues Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT

 

• Varying the Travis Picking Pattern - The song mostly has a standard Travis picking pattern through it. This is usually played across the 6th and 4th strings, or the 5th and 4th strings. However, there is also a lot of variety in the bass picking pattern too that deviates from the standard Travis picking pattern.It can be easy to miss these notes when playing and this can make the music sound a bit off. So what you have to do is really study the music, learn where these changes to the basa picking pattern are, and incorporate them into the music. However, if you're having difficulty with some of these, you can revert back to perhaps a more standard Travis picking pattern.
  

• Getting the Chord Fingerings - When playing through the music you will often form the underlying chords when playing. The temptation is to form these chords as you would normally form them. For instance, if you were strumming the chords out. However, this may not be the best way to place some of these chords. Some times when you transition between chords an alternate fingering may be better. An example of this would be when moving from the G7th chord to the D. You can watch the video and look at the fingerings I use when playing as a guide. or you can work out your own optimal fingerings for playing. However, don't assume that these chords will always be formed in the standard way and be adaptable to change this to make this piece of music slightly easier to play.
  

• Using Small Barres - In some parts of the music, you'll have to play across the 2nd and 3rd strings on the same fret. An example of this is the first bar where you play these two strings on fret 6 and then move up to fret 7. This occurs in other places in the music as well. The temptation here is to play each string with different fingers, but I would advise against that and I would recommend that you just use a small barre with your index finger across both these strings. What this does is free up your other fingers that are going to be needed for playing and stretching to other notes. Again, if you watch the video, you will see the finger and I use when playing it. But I would recommend that you use a small bar on these parts.
  

This is about all I need to say about this piece. Although it has quite a slow tempo there is a lot of variation in the music so you have to keep aware of that when playing. But it is a good, interesting piece to play and isn't too difficult once you learn it all.

 

Thanks for Reading,
Neil