52 weeks of blues

2 thoughts on “Love in Vain”

1. The Robert Johnson tabbook has his tab in open g, with some crazy fingerings to go along with it. For all intents and purposes, this tab is a pretty solid alternative however.

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   • I always work out the tuning by listening to the lowest notes in the song – it’s a pretty good indicator of the tuning because of how RJ used the bass. You can’t know the tuning for absolute certain, but I’m 99% sure this tune is in standard. The lowest note is the F# of the D chords, and in open G you’d have an open D to play in the bass. I’ve looked at that transcription, and while the notes are more or less the same as what I’ve got, it makes no sense to play it in an open tuning without taking advantage of the notes open tunings give you access to.

     Sometimes in transcribing you get stuck on an interpretation that turns out isn’t correct – I’ve got Rabbit Brown’s “James Alley Blues” and Floyd Council’s ‘Runaway Man Blues’ tabs in the wrong tunings/chords on the site here. It takes a while to work the songs out, and sometimes you forget just to listen! You don’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak. A few weeks later you listen to it again, and you realise that it’s played differently to what you worked out.

     I think that’s the case with a few of RJ’s transcriptions. He played so well in so many different tunings that some transcribers work it out in a tuning that maybe it wasn’t recorded in.

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