Learn to play these 3 killer Guns N’ Roses Riffs with Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with this free video lesson.
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson. Today I want to show you three cool Guns N Roses riffs. Each one of these riffs happens to also be that used as the intro for these songs. These are just ones that I picked because I like them. These are kind of not really so much for a beginner as intermediate, but I encourage you if you are a beginner to work with them even if you can’t get them up to speed they’re really good for developing dexterity between your hands and they’re extremely highly recognizable fun rifts to play. So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look.
G N’ R Riff-1 Welcome To The Jungle
All right so the first one we’re going to look at is Welcome To The Jungle. Now at the very first of this is actually using a delay. So what I’m trying to do is just kind of a way to play it to sort of emulate that sound. So what I’m doing here is I’m starting on the fourth fret of the G string and you’ve got triplet, triplet and then it’s like a four note triplet… Okay now we get into the next part here this is where it really becomes difficult. When Slash plays this I believe that he just does it entirely with a pick, but I find it much much easier if you hybrid pick it. So some of the notes I’m going to be playing the lower strings with my pick and then the B string I’m going to use my second finger because the B string is open and it’s constantly being played after the other notes so I just use my middle finger to pluck that; since we have to try to skip the string it makes it a lot easier. So I’m starting here on the fourth fret of the G string with my third finger and I’m gonna put my first finger onto the second fret and we’re gonna play the G string and then the open B string and back to the G string fourth fret to the second fret and then the B string open again and then the G string second fret again to the fourth fret of the D string and then follow that with the open B string again… then the fourth fret of the D string to the second fret and the open B string again and then the second fret of the D string to the open D string and back to the open B string and then to the second fret of the A string and then follow that with the open B string again and then that just repeats…
G N’ R Riff-2 My Michelle
All right so the next one we’re going to look at is My Michelle. So this here we start off we’ve got an A over c sharp (A/C#). So if you take your A major chord, but you want to play it with just the single finger like this, just barring across… I’m going to bar across and then I’m going to take my third finger and I’m going to put it here onto the fourth fret of the A string and then this is just all eighth notes. So you’re just going to play; A, D, G, D, G, D, A and back to D… and that’s the first measure. Then we’re going to take the note here on the A string we’re going to move it down to the third fret and just keep your first finger barred and now we’re going to go; A, D, G and then the B string open and then i’m going to barre across the second fret of the A, D and G strings and play; A, D, G and the open B string again and that’s the first two measures… Then I’m going to take an f sharp minor (F#m) barre chord and you just take your first finger and barre across the second fret and your third finger onto the fourth fret of the A string and your fourth finger onto the fourth fret of the D string and we’re gonna go; E, A, D, G, D, A, E and A and we’re going to do that twice for measures three and four and then the whole thing repeats…
G N’ R Riff-3 Sweet Child O’ Mine
All right and then finally we’re going to look at is the riff for Sweet Child O’ Mine. Now this riff is a lot more difficult to play, especially if you’re a beginner, but this is a great exercise for both of your hands especially if you alternate pick it. So we’re going to start off on the 12th fret of the D string with my first finger and then I’m going to go to the 15th fret of the B string with my third finger and then from there to the 14th fret of the G string with my second finger… and then follow that with the 12th fret of the G string. So what I like to do is just keep my finger right here barred then we’re going to go to the 15th fret of the of the high E string and back to the 14th fret of the of the G string to the 14th fret of the E string and then back to the 14th fret of the G string… So you play that twice and then what’s going to change is the very first note and the rest of them stay the same. So with the first one our first note is the 12th fret of the D string and then on the next one the first note is going to be the 14th fret of the D string. So I’m still going to keep my first finger bar here like this and everything else is the same… All right and then the third time through the 12th fret of the G string is the first note and again I’m just going to keep my first finger here… and then back to the 12th fret of the D string… Now this starts with the 12th fret of the D string and it ends there too and then it just the whole thing repeats; so you end up playing that section two times at the end and then two times at the beginning when it starts over. So the whole thing slowly…
Conclusion
All right so there you have it, three Guns N Roses riffs that are fun ones to play and very recognizable. Like I said if you’re a beginner I encourage you to really try to work with them and even if you have to play them really, really slow for quite a while. You can still recognize what it is and it’s really good for both of your hands. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions or comments about this or any other guitar related subjects. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
