Live - Lightning Crashes - Guitar Lesson

Throwing Copper

1994 5:26

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About Lightning Crashes

Few songs in Alternative Rock build tension as quietly and deliberately as "Lightning Crashes." The whole piece lives in a restrained, arpeggiated guitar figure in E minor that repeats almost hypnotically through the verses before the band swells into the chorus. At 60 BPM, the tempo is slow enough that every note placement matters, and the challenge is not speed but control: keeping your picking even, your dynamics low in the verses, and then driving the strumming with conviction when the song opens up. The tuning is standard E, so nothing exotic is needed, but the key of E minor rewards fingerstyle players who want to bring out the ringing open strings. Live built the arrangement around that contrast between fragile and full, so your focus should be matching those two very different feels. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop the verse arpeggio slowed down until the pick attack is completely consistent before adding the dynamic swells.

• The song's signature verse figure is a gentle, repeating arpeggio pattern in E minor, making clean finger or pick placement the primary technical challenge.
• At 60 BPM in standard E tuning, the slow tempo exposes any unevenness in your picking dynamics, especially during the quiet verse sections.
• The biggest skill to develop here is dynamic contrast: shifting from near-silent arpeggios to full, driven strumming when the chorus arrives.