Guns N' Roses - Dead Horse - Guitar Solo Tab

Use Your Illusion I

1991 4:18

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About Dead Horse

One of the quieter corners of "Use Your Illusion I", "Dead Horse" opens with a fingerpicked acoustic passage in G minor that asks for clean left-hand articulation and steady right-hand control. The song sits at 120 BPM in Eb Standard tuning, so drop every string a half-step before you start. That tuning gives the acoustic parts a slightly looser, warmer feel, and it means your chord shapes sit just slightly lower in tension than usual. The verse fingerpicking pattern is where most players stall: the string skipping and the independence between the bass notes and the melody line on top both need attention before you try to play it up to speed. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop that opening section slowed down until the two-hand coordination feels natural. Guns N' Roses move the arrangement into a fuller electric texture as the song builds, so you will also need to shift gears between the delicate acoustic feel and the harder strummed passages. Hard Rock songs rarely demand this kind of dynamic range from one guitarist, which makes it a genuinely useful piece to work through.

• The song is played in Eb Standard tuning, so all six strings are tuned down a half-step before attempting any of the chord work or fingerpicking.
• The opening acoustic fingerpicking in G minor requires independent thumb and finger control, with bass notes and a melody line running simultaneously.
• Practising the fingerpicked verse passage with the Practice Toolbar looped and slowed will help you lock in the string-skipping before bringing it up to 120 BPM.