It Hurts Me Too by Elmore James Slide Guitar Lesson

Tuning

Before we play anything we need to cover the guitar's tuning for this song. We're not in standard, which will mean you won't be able to rely on familiar box shapes, but the music theory you already know will of course still apply! For this song we're tuned to an open D tuning. The notes we're tuning to (from low to high) are: D A D F# A D. The notes in a D chord are D F# and A, so by tuning the strings to these notes we get a D major chord. Notice that you get a full major chord by barring the strings on a single fret, with the root note on strings 6,4 and 1. This is very useful for slide playing since the slide can't easily play on more than one fret at a time! Here's a diagram showing you the tuning notes for this one:

8 bar blues form

This song is based around an 8 bar blues in 12/8 time, using a pretty standard blues shuffle, alternating between the 5th or 6th over the root note. The chords we're covering are D, G and A to give us our I, IV and V for this 8 bar blues progression. Since we're in open D we can play these by barring a single fret. Here are the diagrams for the three chords:

After we've played the chords over the first six bars we move to a turnaround with a nice descending chromatic run that sounds brilliant against the open strings. Here are the notes for that part:

Then we end on a really nice voicing of our V chord (the A chord). Here's that voicing for reference:

To make it clearer where we are let's map out an 8 bar blues structure:

| I | I | IV | IV |

| I | V - IV | Turnaround | V |

Slide

Now it's time to grab a slide! If you're brand new to slide guitar there are a few key things to think about to get yourself started:

1. Choose a finger! Jed uses the slide on his 3rd finger, but many players use their middle finger.

2. Place the slide over the fret wire! This is probably the most important difference between slide and fretted playing. When we fret a note we aim to press just behind the fret, but with slide you have to be exactly over the fret to be in tune

3. Muting. Start off without a pick, and use your thumb to mute all the strings below the one you're plucking. The slide running over the strings will tend to create unwanted string noise otherwise.

These are just a few considerations when you're starting out with a slide, but there are of course a lot more things to think about! If you'd like to learn more check out this great video where Jed talks more about slide technique in general:

Intro solo

When you're ready, it's time to actually tackle some notes! As we're in the open tuning you'll find your standard shapes don't work! Don't worry though, we can still break this track down based on the chords, and learn where on the neck we want to be over each chord. As it turns out, we're sticking to a small number of positions on the neck. For the first four bars we've hovering over frets 10 and 12 for all of our notes. Pay careful attention to Jed's breakdown as there is a lot more to this than just the notes! Think about whether you're sliding up or down into a note, or if you're even sliding at all! There are times when you don't quite slide all the way to a note before changing direction. Spend plenty of time on this, it will really show in the final result! When we get to bar five we're still in the 10th to 12th fret region but then we slide all the way up to the 16th fret and 14th fret region of the neck. Then for bars six to eight we're back into the 10th to 12th fret area again. Finally, as the introduction ends on the V chord it's a nice idea to highlight that with your lead. Jed shows you how to do this in the video!

Solo

This tune gives you the opportunity to take the slide licks, ideas and positions from the intro and improvise a solo! If you're just starting out you can simply play the intro again, and as you become more comfortable try some variations on what you already know. There's no need to create something entirely new, in fact it's often a great idea to reference ideas that have come earlier. Jed shows off some beautiful slide ideas in the video too for the more ambitious players. Good luck!