Stop Breakin' Down Blues - Robert Johnson - With Free Tab

 

In this video I want to look at the classic Robert Johnson song Stop Breakin' Down Blues. This is one of Johnson's best known songs and it has been covered by many famous artists such as The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and The White Stripes. It is a catchy 12 bar blues in the Key of G. It is played on a guitar in Open G Tuning and is in 4/4 time.

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

Stop Breakin' Down Blues Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT

 

• Palm Muting - In Johnson's original recording he makes extensive use of palm muting on the bass strings. In the version I have done, I use palm muting when playing lower based strings, but when the chords change so that the bass strings are higher up, on the 3rd or 4th string of the guitar, I stop using palm muting. The reason I don't use it is because very little sound is coming out of the guitar when I do this. in Johnson's original recording, it still sounds like he uses palm muting when playing the bass strings on the higher strings. So it's really up to you how much palm muting you want to use when playing this. You may want to do it similar to me or you may want to use palm muting throughout the entire song, or you may just not want to use palm muting at all and just let the bass strings ring out. Just find what works best for you and the guitar you're playing when playing this music.
  

• Double String Bass Notes - From Johnson's original recording, it sounds like when playing the bass notes that he hits two bass strings at once. However, the original recording is quite rough and it is hard to tell. However, by playing two bass notes together, it can give more fuller sound to the bass notes when playing them, especially if you're employing palm muting. However, this is not necessary, and if you're finding awkward to play, just play a single bass string when playing the bass line. Again, you can just try it different ways and find out what works best for you.
  

• Using a Slide - From Johnson's original recording, it is hard to tell if he uses a slide when playing this or not. In certain parts, it does sound like a slide as being used. However, I don't use a slide when playing this version, as I found it largely unnecessary due to the way you fret the notes, which really doesn't give much scope for using a slide anyway. You may want to try playing it with a slide and you may get a sound you like from the music so it's worth giving it a try, but I found it generally unnecessary and it just made the piece of music more cumbersome and awkward to play. 
  

This is about all I need to say about this piece. It is a fairly straightforward piece of fingertsyle blues music. If you are used to playing this style of music, you should be able to learn this quite quickly.

Thanks for Reading,
Neil