The One I Love | TAB
Let’s look at how we can craft The One I Love into one acoustic guitar part by combining what the bass and electric guitar do on the original recording.
The chorus is also the intro, so let’s start here, it goes from chord VI – V, back to VI again. The bass line moving between the two chords is diatonic. The last two bars of Em include that electric riff using an Em7. Here’s the TAB.
I’ve added a D/A in the 2nd bar. This is not what they do on the recording, but on one acoustic guitar, it fattens that D chord up nicely. You could argue that it’s a D5/A but then again, we play an F# (3rd of a D chord) in the bass soon after…
Notice how the Em with Em7 picks out the guitar melody and is played differently on beat 1, this provides variation.
Play this on repeat until you feel comfortable. Using a metronome might help so it doesn’t sound rushed.
Next, let’s look at the verse. Here we also go between Em and D. Bar 1, 4, and 7 don’t have the extension. This is so it doesn’t get in the way of the vocal.
When we play G, I’ve included the bass line again, the Dsus2 is almost the same as before, and the C/G with an ascending bass line feels like a good plan.
On a final note, and this is a tip for the budding songwriter, compare The One I Love with Neil Young‘s My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue). There’s a fine line between being inspired and stealing!
The One I Love TAB | Related Pages
The One I Love | Chords + Lyrics
You can learn to play The One I Love by R.E.M. using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.
| Em | Dsus2 | Em (Em7) | Em (Em7) |
This one goes out to the one I love…
Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics
R.E.M. tunes
R.E.M on the web
About me | Dan Lundholm
This guitar lesson by Dan Lundholm features TAB and covers The One I Love. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.