It Hurts Me Too - Elmore James - With Free Tab

 

In this video I want to share with you my version of the classic blues song 'It Hurts Me Too' by Elmore James. It sounds very similar to his most famous song 'Dust My Broom' and uses an 8 bar blues sequence which is repeated throughout the song. This 8 bar sequence is very similar to a standard 12 bar blues sequence but just condensed down. 

The music is in the Key of D and the lead section is played on a guitar in Open D Tuning. It is in 4/4 time and although you could play it with a pick, I find it easier to play with my fingers. The lead section is played using a slide. In the video, I will give a brief run through of the structure of the song and then play through it with the tab on screen.

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

It Hurts Me Too Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT

 

• Pick or Fingers - You can play this piece of music using either a pick or your fingers, depending on what your preference is. However, I choose to use my fingers because the turnaround section, which you first see in bars 8 and 9, is actually quite tricky to play using a pick. These bars involve playing two or more strings at once, with a gap between them. Now this is quite easy to do if you're using your fingers, but it's quite a tricky technique to do when using a pick. However, if you're comfortable doing this technique using a pick then the rest of the music is very straightforward to play with a pick.
  

• String Muting or Not - String muting is a commonly used technique when playing with the slide. It is used to mute the strings around the one you're playing and stop them ringing out and causing noises you don't want. Now it's really up to you if you want employ string muting or not, depending on how you want the music to sound. If you don't use it, you will get a lot more noise ringing out from the guitar, which may clash with the notes your playing, but this may not be something you dislike. When I am playing through it, I tend to use string muting when I'm playing the notes on the higher strings of the guitar so that these very distinctive notes can ring out cleanly. But when I'm coming down to the lower strings of the guitar and playing with the slide, I don't tend to use it. And that gives a crunchier, raspier sound, which I quite like. But try playing around with string muting when you play this and find a sound you like.
  

• Note Flexibility - In one of the sections of music, which is repeated quite a bit throughout this piece, you use the slide and come down the strings, mostly over the 12th fret. You can see this in bar 3, 4 and 7 of the music, and also later on as well. Now, if you look at the tab, you'll see it that you slide between the 12 and 10th fret as you move down the strings. However, this is not really that exact as to how you do this. For this phrase, If you just start on the note that I show and end on the note I show; how you slide around as you come down the strings is really up to you. It really doesn't have to be played that exact. And to be honest, I probably don't do it exactly as it is in the tab either. So when you are playing this phrase, don't feel you need to stick to the tab exactly, just play around with it and play it in a way that sounds good to you.
  

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

Thanks for Reading,
Neil