Nobody's Fault But Mine

3

Willie Johnson's classic is a one chord tune with a slide guitar riff that closely mimics the vocal line.

Try and play it up-tempo if you can which means you'll have to be very accurate with your slide particularly. The trick to this one is in following the phrasing very closely to get the melody tight around that constant downbeat on the thumb.

tag: 
3 string
song
slide
blues
level: 
intermediate
type: 
song
guitar type: 
3 string fretless

There are 3 Comments

Submitted by mal-c on Tue, 11/24/2015 - 08:00

Hi Pat I have a guitar made by the guy that made your dog bowl resso ,my friend Shane Wagstaff,it has a sound board made from a retro type tin plate plaque ,great looking and nice resso type sound.Although at the moment Iam playing acusticly your fetles guitar has a diferent sound all together and was wondering what gauge strings you use.This is a great bluesy song and would love to crack it.regards Mal (UK)

Submitted by admin on Tue, 11/24/2015 - 08:21

Hi Mal, thanks for the question.

My main consideration when choosing strings to play slide is that the top string is unwound, the tone is so much brighter and responsive. In a six string set this is generally referred to as an unwound 3rd (it's the 3rd in a 6 string set). The guages are approximately .20 (unwound), 0.32 and 0.42.

The main thing with this guitar though is the pickup so it's more like an electric guitar. I'd imagine yours will produce more of an acoustic/resonator tone, which will work with a tune like this for sure. Whether it'll ever sound like mine or not is hard to tell. Experiment.