Bad To The Bone

[BarryS]

Okay, yesterday I watched a movie which contained the George Thorogood song "Bad To The Bone" and that made me want to learn how to play that kickass riff. So I found a tab and this is what it said:

XX00XX XX00XX XX55XX XX00XX XX33XX XX00XX

My question is this? How the heck are you supposed to mute the top and bottom two strings while picking the middle two normally? I play it without the muting and it sounds fine, but I occasionally hit the B string by accident, so it would help to have the muting. Any ideas?

[josh_underwood2]

I was wondering that myself too. And if you listen clostely to that song, it souns like he is using a slide. hmmmmmmmm....

[James]

I would play it just by hitting the middle two strings and not bothering to mute anything else. If you accidently hit the B string, no big deal. Just practice and eventually you'll hit it less and less.
..
I just tried it the muting way using my thumb to mute the E and A strings and my pinky to mute the top 2... it has a nice heavy sound to it. But it's difficult to do and not worth the extra effort if you ask me...

[AtomicMassUnit]

He does use a slide. The X's probably don't mean to mute the strings, theyre probably just there to show that no notes are played. That's a pretty inefficient method of notation, but i guess it's cool. I've never run across anything like that. Later.

Atomic