Sunshine of Your Love Guitar Lesson - Eric Clapton

Genre: blues rock

Difficulty level: beginner-intermediate

Guitar techniques you will learn:

• lead guitar techniques
  • alternate plucking
  • string bending
  • vibrato
• power chords
• string bending
• pentatonic blues scale

Sunshine of Your Love is a great beginner guitar song, and this video guitar lesson will have you playing it in virtually no time at all. Even novice guitarists will find this song really fun to play, since it’s not that difficult. 

The famous intro riff is played on the minor pentatonic blues scale, which is discussed in the lesson. The entire riff is basically made up of a couple notes and power chords, making it a great scale playing exercise. You’ll also learn an interesting technique, where you bend the string and apply vibrato at the same time. This is a really expressive technique, and really adds value to your guitar skills. You’ll be able to experiment with it later on when you start improvising on the minor scale for example.

In summary, the guitar lesson on Sunshine of Your love is a great guitar lesson for beginners, but intermediate guitarists will find it loads of fun as well. You’ll learn about scales, and apply a number of techniques that are a must for your advance as a guitarist.

Song Details

Sunshine of Your Love was released by Cream on the 1968 album Disraeli Gears, Cream’s best selling album to date. The signature intro riff, played by Eric Clapton, has been widely praised ever since. The song’s lyrics were written during an all-night creative session by Cream member Jack Bruce (guitar) and Pete Brown, a poet who worked with the band. 

The song has been covered musical artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Ozzy Osbourne.

Awards and chart rankings:

• Rolling Stone Magazine - Greatest Songs of All Time: #65
• VH1 – Best Hard Rock Songs of All Time: #44