How to play sweet child o mine solo

Slash tells the story of the Guns N' Roses classic Sweet Child O' Mine: “The saving grace for me was the solo section”

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(Image credit: Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage)

Every decade has its rock anthem. While the 1970s had Stairway To Heaven and the '90s had Smells Like Teen Spirit, the most memorable riffathon of the 80s has to be the mighty Sweet Child O’ Mine. Despite not being your typical Guns N’ Roses song, Sweet Child… was released in August 1988, and has since gone on to sell a number of records not that far removed from several hundred gazillion. It continues to evoke bittersweet nostalgia for a generation (or two) of music lovers to this day.

Even people who haven’t heard of Guns N’ Roses know and love the track all these years later, judging by its near-constant presence on radio and music TV. Oh, and there’s the small matter of its primary composer, Saul ‘Slash’ Hudson, playing it at half-time during 2011 Superbowl in front of a TV audience of millions of American football fans. This is a song that will outlive us all.

In passing, I did say that it was sort of a joke or something

It’s been rumoured for years that Slash regarded the ultra-iconic opening riff as a bit of a laugh, but that’s not the whole story, as he told Total Guitar in 2012.

“In passing, I did say that it was sort of a joke or something,” he explained, “but initially it was just a cool, neat riff that I’d come up with. It was an interesting pattern and it was really melodic, but I don’t think I would have presented it to the band and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this idea!’ because I just happened to come up with it while we were all hanging around together. Izzy [Stradlin, GN’R’s second guitarist at the time] was the first one to start playing behind it, and once that happened Axl [Rose, the band’s singer] started making up words, and it took off that way. ”

At the time, none of GN’R had the slightest inkling that Sweet Child O’ Mine would go on to be a planet-busting hit. In fact, Slash found the song mildly irritating. As he explained; “One of the things that always bugged me about Sweet Child… was that it was an uptempo ballad, which didn’t fit what Guns N’ Roses was all about as far as I was concerned. So that song annoyed me every time it came up in the set. It really bugged me!”

Nowadays, Slash is on the wagon, but back in the GN’R era he was an alcoholic (see his 2007 autobiography, Slash, for his account of the grisly details) and that twisty little riff – which is horribly easy to screw up after a few shots of Jack – interfered with his booze consumption.

"That only made him even more impatient with the song. “It really disturbed my drinking,” he chuckled to Total Guitar, “because whenever we did a show I’d have a fair amount of whisky beforehand. But when the song came up in the set, that riff was really hard to remember! [Laughs] So all in all it was a very aggravating song, although ironically it turned out to be the biggest song we ever did. Apparently, the Superbowl last year was the biggest audience for a TV show ever.”

But while Slash thought Sweet Child… was a bit wussy for, ‘the most dangerous band in the world’ (© A. Rose 1985), and despite the fact that it got in the way of his pre-show tipple, he admitted that parts of it floated his boat. “The saving grace for me was the solo section,” he says. “That was a very organic solo that came together simply. When we said, ‘Here’s the chord changes,’ it occurred very spontaneously, and I always looked forward to that part of the song in the set. It was completely different to the rest of the song.”

The super-warm tone that Slash wrung out of his Les Paul for the solo came from a Marshall amp, although he went elsewhere for the clean chords in the verses. “The only time that I didn’t use a Marshall on Sweet Child… was on the clean bits, and believe it or not, those came through a Roland 120 Jazz Chorus amp, which was hanging around the studio,” he says.

As for the guitar Slash played, it could only ever have been a Les Paul – but perhaps not the Les Paul that you’d expect. “I was lucky even to have a guitar for the Appetite album,” he explained. “Originally, when I got to the studio, I had somehow, in a fit of desperation, pawned most of my guitars, so all I had was a BC Rich Warlock and two Jacksons. I’d been playing those guitars live, and they sounded OK in a room full of people, but when I actually went and heard them in the cans they sounded f***in’ horrible.”

Fortunately, fate intervened in the form of GN’R manager Alan Niven, Slash recalls. “Right before we went in to do the guitar overdubs, Alan gave me a handmade copy of a 1959 Les Paul made by a guy called Kris Derrig. He built a run of between 50 and 100 immaculate ’59 reissues, and that was the guitar that I used for the whole record. You could never tell that they weren’t Gibsons.” [Slash has continued to record with this Derrig guitar and acquired another in 1996.]

How Hard Is It To Play Sweet Child O' Mine On a Guitar?

Sweet Child O’ Mine is one of the biggest hits by Guns ‘n’ Roses. You can recognize it instantly. The main, opening riff by Slash is one of the most known guitar riffs in rock ‘n’ roll music.

If you still don’t know how to play it, you may ask the following question. Is it hard to play? How hard is it really? On what playing level do I have to be to learn it?

Overall, Sweet Child O’ Mine is not that hard to learn & play. Some parts of the song are harder than other parts. In short, you have to be at least intermediate guitar player to learn it and play it properly. Guitar solo is the hardest part to learn in the song.

We can divide the song in few parts. Different parts demand different level of guitar competence. In this article, we’re going to analyze each part of the song; what do you need to know before, and how to exercise it.

Let’s go!

Opening Riff

Opening guitar riff, composed and played by Slash, is one of the most known guitar riffs. Basically, it is a D major triad chord picked up one note at the time.

How hard is it to learn it?

It’s really not that hard. If you’re an intermediate guitar player, you’ll learn how to play it almost instantly. However, if you’re a beginner, it may take a little time to nail it properly.

What Do You Need To Know Before?

1. Alternate Picking

Since the riff is played with alternate picking style, you need to know how to pick that way. Alternate picking means picking with downstrokes and upstrokes. The trickiest part of playing with alternate picking is the transition between strings. Especially between non-adjacent strings.

Fortunately, there are tons of exercises that help you with mastering alternate picking. If you’re not familiar with alternate picking, you must exercise in order to play the riff.

Here’s one exercise that helped me a lot.

The exercise may look scary at the first, but trust me, it is one of the best. Especially when it comes to transition from one string to another, non adjacent string. That’s particularly helpful with the opening riff of Sweet Child O’ Mine.

Just take your time and watch the video when you’re ready. It will help you not only with this riff in particular, but your playing will improve, in general.

2. Muting and Ringing Strings

In the opening riff, strings do not ring out. They are not muted either. You need to know how to play it properly. In particular, the tones from the opening riff are muted by the fingers of your playing hand. You mute the string just by relaxing the finger on the fret after the tone is being played.

3. Basic Finger Dexterity

Main, opening riff requires that your fingers quickly change position from one string to another. That requires a basic level of finger dexterity. Without finger dexterity, you won’t be able to press your finger onto the fret properly and at the right moment.

Also, you have to be sure to position your fingers in a way they don’t mute the adjacent string. Spider exercise is the best and quickest way to attain finger dexterity. You can watch the exercise in the video below.

Opening Riff – Recap

That’s it. If you have every requirement listed above checked, you’re ready to learn the riff. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube showing riff in a slowed down manner. This one I like:

Anyway, the general advice when it comes to learning is always the same. Take it slow and use the metronome!

Rhythm Part

After the opening riff, Axl Rose starts to sing. Beneath his singing there’s the rhythm guitar playing basic chord progression. D major, Cadd9 and G major are the chords. In the chorus the progression goes from A, to G, to D.

It’s played in clean tone. This really shouldn’t be hard to play.

What Do You Need To Know Before?

There’s only one thing you should know before. It’s the basic rhythmic strumming pattern. As it is in the song itself. Nothing else.

I assume you know how to transition the chords in time, so I won’t mention it further.

Bridge Solo and Main Solo

After the chorus, there’s a solo melody that keeps repeating throughout the song.

What Do You Need To Know Before?

Here’s what you need to know before attempting to learning it.

1. Vibrato

This goes for the main solo, too. Doing vibrato on a string is needed skill, not only for this song. Vibrating a string with a finger on fretboard is essential.

Without it, the sound is lifeless and dull. Vibrato is the main way to express the feeling through the guitar. Make sure you know how to do vibrato on a string in a decent manner.

2. String Bending

Another technique essential for playing the solo of Sweet Child O’ Mine is string bending. In general, most of guitar solos consists of much of string bending.

String bending is, with the vibrato, one of the main way of expressing feeling and liveliness of the tone.

Make sure you know how to bend a string in a proper manner.

Here’s the related article from this site you may want to read.

How To Make Guitar Strings Bend Easier?

3. Playing Around With Pentatonic Scales

Slash is the guitar player that uses pentatonic scales in his playing. Almost exclusively. To approach this particular solo, it is the good idea for you to take a look at major pentatonic scale. With knowing how pentatonic works on a guitar, you’ll be able to connect pieces of this solo together much quicker.

4. Hammer On’s and Pull Of’s

Hammer on’s and pull off’s (or flick off’s) are used in most of rock songs. Needless to say, knowing them is one of the main precondition for playing Sweet Child O’ Mine solo. It contains a lot of hammer on’s and pull off’s.

5. Sliding

Last, but not the least, is the sliding. Sliding notes are not hard. Just play with it and you’ll quickly nail it down. The solo contains lot of slides from one fret to another.

How To Set Up For The EXACT Sound?

Let’s suppose you know all the techniques mentioned above. You may wonder; OK, but how do I get the EXACT sound on my guitar? We all know Slash has his Les Paul, but what about amp settings?

Well, here’s one practical solution. You can use a multi-effect guitar processor, like Line6HX Stomp with which you can tweak the settings and set up the exactly same tone as it’s recorded. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the video below.

For more details about the Line6 HX Stomp, check it out on Amazon.

If you’re more for the traditional way of setting up the sound, here’s the few tips:

medium reverb
bring up the chorus effect for clean parts
use wah for the solo, of course; Jim Dunlop’s Cry Baby (Amazon link) is pretty good here, IMO

General Tips

OK, so we analyzed what do you need to know before. In other words, preconditions. Now let’s get through some general tips which will help you to nail the song in shortest time possible.

Use a Metronome

Use a metronome. In other words, slow down the tempo to the speed you feel comfortable on. Soon you’ll be able to tell when is the moment to increase the tempo.

Watch How It’s Played

Take your time and watch some live shows of Slash playing the song. Or any other person playing. That way you’ll visually adopt the information needed in case you don’t know how something is played.

Watch The Mistakes You Make

You’ll be making a lot of mistakes. That’s normal, it happens to everyone who tries learning new stuff. What particular mistake can you make?

It’s the sloppiness. The opening riff does not forgive any sloppiness, no matter how small it is. You’ll probably mute some strings you don’t wanna mute, and let ring other strings you don’t wanna hear ringing. Just an example.

Whenever you make a mistake, focus your attention on that detail. Try it again and again. Slow.

Take a Rest

There’s a limited amount of information your body can take at a time. The same goes for this song. You cannot expect yourself to play it perfectly after only one session of learning and playing.

Take a rest. Sometimes a 10 minute rest is enough. Sometimes a day is needed. That’s OK, just take your time, and soon you’ll notice how your playing becomes improved.

Conclusion

I hope this article gave you an important insight and information about how to play and how hard is to play Sweet Child O’ Mine.

As it’s being said, it’s not the super hard song to play. However, even when you learn it completely, you still may not sound good enough.

That’s because the Slash has it’s own way of playing that’s not easy to match. But don’t worry about that. You can develop your style of playing. It just have to sound good enough.

Anyway, thanks for reading about this. You can check some other interesting posts if you wish.

Playing Tips

Cheers, and rock on!

Read "Ian Gillan. Dear Glory" - Dribushchak Vladimir Vladmirovich, Galin Alexander V. - Page 10 sometimes for the whole show the musicians played only four compositions, stretching them up to half an hour (the same "Mandrake Root"). But Gillan was not upset: “This time was one continuous big adventure. The instrumentalists were breaking free from the fetters of so-called pop music and groping their way into new territories, bringing extended solos and adventurous compositional builds into a previously quite narrow field.

So I thought it was great to be a part of it all, even though my role in it was smaller than others.” However, it happened when he was helped to brighten up "loneliness". Ian recalls how a girl jumped on stage at one of the concerts, and they climbed under the piano with her. Fortunately, Blackmore played a long solo, which allowed Gillan to make love at a leisurely pace.

It should be noted that Ian was not just an extra during the band's lengthy instrumental improvisations. Already at the first concert, on July 10, 1969, he tries to play the congas. In the future, Gillan will regularly use them at concerts. Ian also played the harmonica. He mastered it as a child, but when he heard how bluesmen play the harmonica, he changed the manner of performance - he began to draw air into himself, and not blow. He also learned little tricks: “Before playing the harmonica, it must be lowered into a bucket of cold water, and then shaken well. It's a very juicy sound…” Unlike congas, which Ian hasn't played for several years, harmonica and tambourine are an indispensable attribute of today's DEEP PURPLE concerts. The only problem is that Hohner (he loves the models of this company) stopped producing high-quality instruments. “I can't play the new models. They are made in China and there is something wrong with the mouthpiece0008 approx. author). I have torn my lips to shreds more than once, so today I use tools from other companies. You will need to talk to Hohner (owner of Hohner, - author's note).

Gillan knows how to play the guitar, but usually uses it only when writing songs and "for his own entertainment." Occasionally he would pick up the guitar during solo performances in the 90s. Oddly enough, Ian does not like to play the piano, although this instrument was in the house of the Gillan family. Yes, and my uncle Ivor (Ivor) was a jazz pianist.

Gillan's biggest contribution to DEEP PURPLE's work is as a co-author of music and lyrics. As a rule, Blackmore, Lord, Glover and Paice came up with an instrumental part, and then it was Gillan's turn: “If you can imagine a record without vocals, then this is what I worked with. An instrumental backing, even the most beautiful, is not a song." So, most of all, wonderful instrumental passages with amazing Blackmore riffs took on their final form thanks to the melodic line invented by Gillan. Lyrics for songs Ian composed, as a rule, together with Glover. Sometimes they came up with words separately, and then finalized them together, sometimes they composed the text together. Gillan's most famous song is without a doubt "Child In Time". This is the quintessence of Ian's creativity, his calling card. This is how he will name the first album of his own group in the mid-70s, this is how the book with his autobiography will be called ... But, ironically, the song itself is to a certain extent a plagiarism, and its title is the result of a mistake.

“We borrowed it from the American band IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY, from the song “Bombay Calling”, or rather, it was an instrumental piece. Instead of their violin, John played a phrase on the organ, then I began to sing the words that are now known to everyone. Before we knew what had happened, we had an entire song based on this IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY musical phrase. We never hid it, and always emphasized that our song was inspired by these Americans.”

In fairness, it should be noted that this composition was made legendary not by a borrowed melody, but by Ian's vocal part, in which he sings higher and higher, switching to a siren scream. No wonder the newspaper "Melody Maker" called Gillan's voice "silver".

In the case of "Child In Time" we met a good catchy melody, a virtuoso vocal part, interesting solo instrumentalists. Yes, and the text written by Ian hit the mark: “It was a time when the so-called “cold war” set the tone in world politics. People lived in fear, expecting a nuclear catastrophe. I don't remember where the name "Child in Time" came from. The lyrics say, “Sweet child, in time you’ll see the line…”, do you understand? The line separating good from evil. This song is about the stupidity and blindness of the rulers of the world. I used a euphemism when I spoke of the "blind", referring to those who, with their eyes closed, are ready to shoot the world. What does personality mean to them? Nothing. They are guided by an ideology that is absolute insanity.”

This is how the anti-war manifesto was born:

Dear child, in due time

You will see the line,

The line drawn

Between good and evil.

You will see a blind man,

Shooting at the world.

Bullets fly, harvesting.

If you were bad,

And of course you were,

Better close your eyes,

Lower your head

And wait until

ricochet hits you.

The title of the song, "Child in Time", which looked very psychedelic, fell in love with millions (it is interesting that this composition sounds in the cult film of Laps von Trier "Breaking the Waves").

However, speaking of Gillan's texts, one should not forget that not all of them are equal, and they do not always have a deep meaning: “I have a principle. The main criterion for evaluating my texts is how they sound. And only then you need to evaluate their content. If I manage to put an interesting idea into the text, it goes without saying that this is a cause for great joy for me. But, in my opinion, if the text expresses something important, but does not sound properly, and even more so gives the impression of being pretentious and far-fetched - all for nothing. In rock 'n' roll, the voice has to be seen as just another instrument. And this should not be forgotten. If this principle is observed, and besides, the text is interesting, that’s great!”

So looking for an idea in songs like "Speed King" is a waste of time. The text of this composition, the first written by the Mark II line-up, is a simple set of words, quotes from rock and roll standards, but all these phrases sound really great. True, on the album In Rock, , which included "Speed King", there are also enough program compositions with meaning. The lyrics to the songs "Flight Of The Rat" and "Into The Fire", which Ian wrote with Glover, are a protest against drugs. This album catapulted DEEP PURPLE into the big leagues of rock music. We talked about "peplomania".

The next record, Fireball, , turned out to be different, and some fans who expected intense, energetic hard a la In Rock, were disappointed. The members of DEEP PURPLE also expressed their dissatisfaction with this disc ... Everyone except Gillan: “If you want to know my opinion, other musicians do not like Fireball just because this album did not have the success that In Rock had. But, in my opinion, it was an interesting disc, and it should be treated as an experiment. There was no simplicity in him0056 In Rock, but this record already has the beginnings of everything that will later appear on Machine Head. Fireball is a very solid album. While working on it, we did not adhere to any rules that existed in rock music. This album planted the seed for the next phase of DEEP PURPLE's career, and if you listen carefully to the lyrics, you can see that some of the things they talk about later came true. "

The Steam Awards 2018 - named the best games of the year according to Steam users

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The company Valve held a live broadcast, where they announced the winners of the people's award The Steam Awards 2018 . In total, eight categories were announced, the winners in each of which were determined by open voting during the winter sale.

Game of the Year:

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
Monster Hunter World
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Hitman 2
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

VR Game of the Year:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
VRChat
Beat Saber
Fallout 4 VR
SuperHot VR

Favorite child:

"This game is no longer a novelty. The time when the developers first revealed their creation to the world is far behind. Like true loving parents, they do not stop raising and supporting their child. And to this day something new is being added to the game."

Grand Theft Auto V
Dota 2
No Man's Sky
Path of Exile
Stardew Valley

The best environment:

"Long-winded scenes, constant reminders of first-aid kits. .. Let's be honest: the game does not need characters. As the winner shows, sometimes amazing environments tell a lot more than a thousand chatty heroes."

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Subnautica
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Far Cry 5
Dark Souls III

A friend is known in the game:

"There are some games that won't fully open up if you play them alone. Maybe it'll be more fun if a friend has your back? Or put his back under your knife - that's whoever you like."

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Payday 2
Dead by Daylight
Overcooked! 2

Best Alternative History:

"Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Those who remember it will simply choose to reinvent the past and consign themselves to this award for the most exciting rewriting of history this year. "

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
Wolfeinstein II: The New Colossus
Hearts of Iron IV
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Fallout 4

A storehouse of machine fun:

"Whether it's a car, truck, robot or other gadget, the winner in this category put the gas pedal to the floor and created an unforgettable gameplay with mechanisms."

Rocket League
Euro Truck Simulator 2
NieR: Automata
Factorio
Space Engineers

Best Developer:

"Maybe this studio listened to its fans, came up with something really unexpected, or just kept its promises and created a truly great game - this year it has no equal."