Guitartricks – How to Play – I’m A Man (Bo Diddley)

In this blues tutorial, Anders Mouridsen is going to teach you the one-chord classic “I’m A Man”, by Bo Diddley. Anders will tune you in to what makes a song like this tick, then how to get the tone. We’ll look at how to tune your guitar to an open E tuning, where to place the capo, and how to play the repeating riff. Next up, Anders will teach the licks and soloing, followed by how to play the riff in standard tuning. We’ll end things with a full performance play along, then a jam along where you take over.

In this tutorial I’m gonna teach you how to play the classic blues song “I’m A Man”, as made famous by Bo Diddley. This song is a simple one chord blues, and on first listen, an inexperienced blues player could think that there isn’t much to be learned from it apart from that one riff.

But once you dive into it you find the essence of what this style of music is about! It’s not about showing how many licks or chords you know or always playing ripping guitar solos. It’s about conveying emotion, and repeating the same one chord riff for a whole song can put you in a trance-like state that’s really cool and really puts the lyrics in focus! It’s more challenging to do than you’d think.