Does a blues guitarist tune their guitar differently?
There can be a lot of reasons why your chords from the TAB sheet don’t sound the same. It can be something as simple as the TAB being wrong (this does happen – more than people think!) or that the TAB is written in a different key than the one in which song is actually played. Or that the recording of the song has been altered (sped up or slowed down) so that it is not really in tune with the real world. It can also be a matter of the blues’ artist’s guitar being tuned differently. This is especially true if it is a slide guitarist – they tend to use open tunings (DGDGBD, DADF#AD, EBEG#BE, etc). But more often than not it is a matter of voicing and chord embellishment than anything else. Say a blues song is in the key of A. Well, the TAB will usually list the chords as A, D and E. But the guitarist may chose other, “embellished” chords (that is, chords with the same basic triads but with added notes for flavor). Instead of an A, he may play an A7 and then add to the confusion by playin
