Whipping Boy
Artist: Ben Harper
Album: Welcome to the Cruel World
This song is played in a different tuning (Open C I think), using a slide. But you can
most of the song (apart from the solo) in standard tuning, use vibrato on the some of the
to approximate the sound of playing notes with a slide.
If you can’t find a good Ben Harper tab on UG, try:
http://benharpertablatures.free.fr/tablatures/welcome/whipping2.htm
its got free tabs/sheet music (of varying accuracy) for all of his songs. Unfortunately,
of the sheet music is in French or bad English.
The first 4 notes of part1 are not exactly what ben harper plays, but it fits if you
work out what he actually plays.
~ = vibrato
Capo on 3rd fret
Part1 (play the low notes of the chord heavily)
[ Tab from: http://www.guitaretab.com/b/ben-harper/151351.html ]
(x2) “Don’t want to be your whip-pi-ing boy”
C Am
e -------------x----x--|-------------------------------------------|
b -------------x----1~-|---------------------1~--------------------|
g -------------0~---2~-|---------------------2~--------------------|
d -------------2~---2~-|-------5-5-7-7-9-5s4-2~--------------------|
a ---------0---3~---0~-|-----0-3-3-5-5-7-3s2-0~--------------------|
E -0h3p0-3-----x----x--|-0-3---------------------------------------|
Part 2
Pick these notes really hard.
e ------------------------------|------------------------------|
b ------------------------------|------------------------------|
g ----2~-5~--2~-----2~-------2--|-----2~-5~--2~----2~----------|
d -2h5-----------5~----5p2-0----|--2h5----------5~----2h0------|
a ------------------------------|-------------------------3-0--|
E ------------------------------|------------------------------|
The song is mainly just a combination of these two riffs, plus the slide guitar solo.
could just improvise around part2 and the blues scale
