Learn to play three more fun and easy Guns N Roses riffs with Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman, aka Uncle D. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with the step by step video instruction and you will be rockin’ these classic riffs tonight!
Introduction
How’s it going everybody this is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I’ve got three more fun and easy riffs for you from Guns N Roses.
Right now Guitar Control is giving away this really cool free chord chart, there’s a link in the description where you can download yours. It’s every chord you could ever need all neatly compiled into one sheet so you can download it and print it off and put a copy where you practice, put a copy in your gig bag; so just in any given situation you can have any chord you need at a glance and it’s a free download.
So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these Guns N Roses riffs.
Guns N Roses Riff-1 – Don’t Cry
All right so the first Guns N Roses riff we’re going to look at is Don’t Cry and this just uses just some kind of garden variety chords that you probably already know. So we’ve got an A minor (Am) and a D minor (Dm)… G major and a C major… All right, so we start off with this Am, but the very first note is actually this G here on the third fret of the low E string. So what I do is I just put my fingers down for the Am and then I just use my pinky to pick up the third fret of the low E string. So on the first measure we rest on the first three beats and then we hit this G note coming in on beat four; so it’s like one, two, three, four and then starting on the downbeat of one of the second measure we start arpeggiating this Am chord. So we start with the A string open; so we go A, D, G and we skip over the B string and go to the high E string E, B, G and then the open D string… Now we hit that and then we’re gonna switch to a Dm chord and we hit that open D string again and now we go D, G, B, E, B, G and then the open A string and that’s like the little transition note to get us to the G chord which comes next… So we start on the low E string E, A, D and then we skip the B string and go to the high E string B, G, open A string and now we’re going to go to the third fret here on the A string and we pick this and then the D string open and the G string open. Then we move down a half step so now we’re on the second fret of the A string and we do the same thing A, D, G and then back to the third fret to the second fret and then that transitions us back into an Am. So that’s like the first three measures; one, two, three, four… Am again picked the same way… Dm… to G. So this time we go to G we’re just going to play E, A, D, G and these are 16th notes, so it’s like one e and ah, two e and uh… So what we’re going to do here is when we when we play the G, E, A, D, G and that’s on the last 16th note of beat number one, but it’s tied to the first 16th note of beat two and then the other three sixteenth notes we go to the sixth string our low E string and we go second fret, third fret to the fourth fret and then we finally end on a open A string as a half note that just rings out…
Guns N Roses Riff-2 – Night Train
The next Guns N Roses riff to look at is the riff from Night Train. So this one uses a whole bunch of Triad shapes; so if you’ve seen any of my previous videos you’ll already know these shapes. So we start off we just have an A5 so I’m playing the A string open and I’m barring at the second fret on the D and the G string just with my first finger. So this is a dotted half note so this is like the first three beats, one, two, three and then starting on the downbeat of four it’s just gonna be the open A string, but on the and of four we’re going to do this little Triad here. So this is a an E minor over A (Em/A); so my first finger is on the seventh fret of the D string and my third finger is on the ninth fret of the G string and my second finger is on the eighth fret of the B string. So we hit that on the and of four and it’s tied to the downbeat of one of the second measure. So we’re going to hit that four and one and the and of one we hit it again and then we’re gonna go to our next chord which is a D over A (D/A). So all we’re going to do is just take our second and third finger off and just let our first finger barre the seventh fret here of the D, G and B string… Hit that on beat two and three and for beat four we just move it down a whole step to the fifth fret that’s C over G (C/G)… Okay, so we hit this on four and it’s tied to the next measure. The next measure starts off with a dotted half note so we’re going to hit this four, one, two, three, actually it’s a double dotted so it takes up all of the measure except the and a four. So we’re gonna hit that four, one, three, four and then on the and before we hit it again and it’s tied to the downbeat of one of the next measures so it rings out for like equivalent of a whole beat… And then on the and of one we hit it again and then on the downbeat of two we’re gonna do a G major; so third fret on the fifth fret of the D string, second finger on to the fourth fret of the G string and First Finger onto the third fret of the B string and we hit this on beat two. So it’s two, three and then on the downbeat of four we’re gonna scoot this down a whole step and we’re first gonna hit just the D string on the down downbeat of four and then on the and of four it’s like an F major chord, but we’re just hitting the top end of it. So second fret of the G string with my second finger and my first finger is barring the first fret of the B and the high E string and that’s the first four measures… All right, so when we hit that F that’s tied to a dotted half note on measure five so it rings out for the first three beats and then on the downbeat of four we’re gonna pick this third fret of the D string again and we’re going to slide to the fifth fret, four and we slide up simultaneously and drop our first finger so it’s going to pick up the first or excuse me the third fret of the high E and the B string and the G string is open… So we hit that on the and of four and it’s tied to the downbeat of one of the next measure… we’re gonna hit it again on the and of one and then we’re going to take our middle finger and put it down onto the fourth fret of the G string and take our pinky and put it down onto the fifth fret of the G string; just keep your second finger where it is because this is a G suspended four (Gsus4)… G again, back on, back off and then we’re going to do an A5 over E (A5/E). So we’re going to come down to the first chord we did, we’re just not going to hit the A string, so we’re just picking the second fret of the D string and the G string and this is on beat three. Downbeat of four is the D and G string open and that’s tied to a whole note of the next measure…
Guns N Roses Riff-3 – Rocket Queen
All right then the last Guns N Roses riff to look at is the riff from Rocket Queen. So this one’s really simple, it’s just a couple of notes and it’s repetitive, but it’s just kind of the timing and the use of muting and stuff that makes it a really cool riff I think. All right, so we start off and on the downbeat of one we play the open low E string and then on the and of one we played the second fret and you wouldn’t want to use your second finger. So that’s one and, but we want to palm mute that, so one and, and then starting on the downbeat of two we’re going to sixteenth notes. So we’re gonna play the D, excuse me the A string open one and, and then we’re gonna do a hammer-on to the first fret and that’s not palm muted… So we do the hammer-on and then we come back to the second fret of the low E string palm muted and that’s like the first two beats… All right, so after we hit this open low E string, it’s played on the last 16th note of beat two and it’s tied to the first 16th note of beat three so it rings out for like the equivalent of an eighth note and then we play the open low E string again, uh e and uh, so open to the second fret twice… Then we’re going to go back to the open A string starting on beat four and that’s not palm muted… So it’s a pretty cool riff and it does that like a whole bunch of times and then at the and of it to kind of to finish that before it goes into the next part of the song we have starting on beat number one this… It’s all 16th notes so we’ve got; one e, so the open low E string twice and then to the second fret, and uh, so one and, so that’s beat one. And then starting on beat two we do the open a string hammer to the first fret not Palm muted… and so that’s two e and then back to the second fret of the low E string and back to palm muting and then the open for uh and then we rest on beat two…
Conclusion
All right, so there you have it, three more fun, not two terribly difficult, riffs to play by Guns N Roses. So if you like this Guns N Roses riff lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. 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 this Guns N Roses riff lesson and have a great day.
