Sweet Child o' Mine Guitar Lesson - Guns N Roses

Genre: Hard Rock

Difficulty level: intermediate

Guitar techniques you will learn in this lesson:

• lead guitar techniques
  • hammer-on
  • pull-off
  • slide
  • string bending
• power chords
• power chord strumming
• string muting
• minor scale

The Sweet Child o’ Mine electric guitar lesson is a huge lesson jam packed with information that you must known, no matter whether you are into hard rock or not. You will learn many things related to lead guitar techniques, so don’t neglect this lesson!

The lesson starts off with the super famous intro riff, which is based on the minor scale and is a great string skipping exercise. The minor scale is a very important scale that you’ll eventually be using to improvise and make up your own licks and solos, just like Slash does in the song. You’ll also get a chance to practice power chords and power chord strumming and string muting, which is not the easiest technique, but is a must know if you are serious about learning to play the guitar well.

To sum it up, this lesson will greatly improve your lead guitar skills, as you’ll be practicing basically every lead guitar technique there is. If you're an absolute beginner, you might find this lesson a bit challenging. Don't worry, you'll get there soon, have a go at one of our beginner guitar lessons until then.

Song Details

Sweet Child o' Mine" by the Guns N' Roses was released on their debut album Appetite for Destruction in 1987. It became a number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988. The subject of the song is Axl Rose's girlfriend, Erin Everly.

The famous intro riff was made up by the band’s lead guitarist, Slash. It’s played on one scale, and supposedly he made it up just by fooling around on the scale to his fellow band members at a jam session. The result of this was that the song brought the band international fame, as well as top of the chart listings. The song has been covered by many artists, including Sheryl Crow, Linkin Park, etc.

Awards and chart rankings:

• Billboard Hot 100: #1 (1988)
• RIAA's list of the best songs of the 20th century: #210 
• Guitar World Magazine’s "100 Greatest Guitar Solos": #37 
• Blender's 500 Greatest Songs: #3
• Rolling Stone Magazine’s  500 Greatest Songs of All Time: #196
• Rolling Stone Magazine’s  40 Greatest Songs that Changed the World
• Q magazine 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks: #6
• Total Guitar magazine: reader voted number-one riff of all-time