How to Play Guitar Like Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson died in relative obscurity at the age of 27 in the late 1930s but he has emerged as one of the most influential of the Mississippi blues players. Johnson developed a sophisticated guitar style based upon earlier Mississippi players such as Charlie Patton, Skip James and Son House. Johnson only recorded 29 songs but the Johnson songbook help to create modern blues guitar playing. Johnson used a few different patterns for different songs. He used a specific 12-bar blues pattern in the key of A major for songs such as "Kind Hearted Woman," "Dead Shrimp" and "Me and the Devil." He used a boogie-woogie pattern for songs such as "Rambling on My Mind" and "Sweet Home Chicago." He was also one of the early masters of bottleneck guitar.
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Instructions
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Pluck the guitar strings with your thumb and fingers. Maintain a bass line with your thumb on the sixth, fifth and fourth strings while using the index finger and middle fingers to play melody lines or guitar runs on the third, second and first strings.
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Play a basic boogie-woogie pattern in the key of E on the sixth and fifth strings with your thumb. Strike the sixth and fifth strings with your thumb at the same time. The open E string is played and the fifth string is fretted to play B (2nd fret), C# (4th fret) and D (5th fret). You are always playing two notes together. The boogie-woogie pattern is played in 4/4 time using eighth notes, two notes per beat. The basic pattern is 1 (EB,EB), 2 (EC#, EC#), 3 (ED,ED), 4 (EC#,EC#).
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Play the boogie-woogie pattern on the fifth and fourth strings. This works for the A chord.
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Play A7 and Adim7 on the 4th, 5th and 6th frets of the guitar using the fifth, fourth, third and second strings. A7 is played with A (fifth string open), G (5th fret, fourth string), C# (6th fret, 3rd string), E (5th fret, second string), Adim7 is played with A (open, fifth string), G-flat (4th fret, fourth string), C (5th fret, third string), E flat (4th fret, second string). This is the first version of the A7 and Adim7 chords used by Johnson.
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Play A7 and Adim7 on the 7th, 8th, and 9th frets on the fifth, third, second and first strings. A7 is played with A (open, fifth string), E (9th fret, third string), G (8th fret, second string) and C# (9th fret, first string. Adim7 is played with A (open, fifth string), E-flat (8th fret, third string), G-flat (7th fret, second string) and C (8th fret, first string). This is the second version of the A7 and Adim7 chords used by Johnson.
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Incorporate Johnson's A7 and Adim7 chords in Johnson's blues songs alternating between the first and second versions of the chords. Johnson used a standard 12-bar format. The symbols "/ /" represent one bar in 4/4 time. The structure is A Adim7/ A Adim7/ A Adim7/ A Adim7/ A Adim7/ D7 / D7/A Adim7/ A Adim7/ E7/ D7/ A Adim7.
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Tune the guitar to open A tuning. The tuning is EAEAC#E, going from the sixth string to the first string. Play an A chord by playing the open strings or fretting the 12 fret. The D chord is played at the 5th fret and the E chord is played at the 7th fret. Johnson used open A tuning for his bottleneck guitar songs such as "Come in My Kitchen" and "Terraplane Blues."
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Place the bottleneck on the third or fourth finger of your left hand. Lay the bottleneck over the 12th fret without pressing the strings down. Play the strings to play an A chord. You can also play an A chord by playing the open strings. Move the bottleneck to the fourth fret to play a D chord and to the fifth fret to play a E chord. Playing bottleneck guitar produces lots of unwanted overtones. The overtones are muted by laying the fingers of the left hand on the strings behind the bottleneck. Another muting technique is to use the palm and fingers of right hand to mute the strings.
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Practice playing melody notes on the treble strings with the bottleneck while playing bass notes on the lower strings.
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Tips & Warnings
The most difficult aspect of capturing Johnson's style is the syncopated rhythms he used to weave around his vocals. Careful listening, study and practice is the only way to develop the proper feel for Johnson's sense of rhythm. It helps to sing the songs yourself while you play the guitar.
Another advantage of open A tuning is that you have root note, "A" and the 5th note, "E" on the bass strings. The root note is on the fifth string and the E is on both the sixth and fourth strings, an octave apart. This makes it possible to play simple bass patterns with your thumb while playing melodies and guitar riffs with your fingers.
References
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