Doc Watson - Blue Railroad Train - Guitar lesson with TAB
Doc's version of Blue Railroad train is great- there's a lot packed in here and although it sounds simple it took a long time to learn but it was really worth it.
Opening Riff
There's a lot of fun little licks like this one in first section of the song. Something that really helped me is to focus on on the first second and fourth strings:
You'll be going between the sixth and the fourth strings with the thumb. You can ignore the third string for now. There's a tricky bend there at the end you'll want to run through slowly.
Then there's this part here:
So you'll keep your middle and your ring finger on frets six and seven of the D and G string and walk your index finger up from the 4th to 5th fret and then use your pinky to fret the 7th- to follow that melody.
Then there's this A7 shape. Use your pinky again to follow the melody on the high E string:
Next there's this cool run. Your thumb follows the regular "boom chick" quarter note rhythmh your index will hit the same note just before it with great effect. Don't forgot about the hammer on:
Verse
For the verse, you can vamp on initial E7 shape until we get to the this part here:
For the measure with A: you can kind of "claw it out" by playing the first three notes with your index and middle finger. That works. Or you can keep the rhythm of the thumb going, hitting the 2nd fret of the G string with your thumb.
And then it goes from A7 to A6 to a "traditional" A7 (with the open E string) to that kind of froggy sounding E major lick.
Then it goes back and plays through the intro again.
The Break
Take your time and play through it slowly. Note how the single string melody (last two lines) starts a beat earlier the second time around.
In the download link above you can download a PDF tab as well as an interactive version so you can slow it down and make it easier to break into small parts. When I recorded this, rather than using a metronome, I found it easier to create a backing track with bass and some drums even though I didn't include them at the beginning of the video. So that's included in the download as well to make it easier for you to practice. Good luck and have fun!