Guns N' Roses - Locomotive 3 - Guitar Solo Tab

About Locomotive 3

Few songs on the Use Your Illusion records demand as much stamina from a guitarist as "Locomotive." Clocking in at around 8 minutes and built in E minor at 120 BPM, it moves through several distinct sections, so knowing where you are structurally is half the battle. The main riff leans hard on palm-muted low-E chugging with sharp rhythmic accents, and staying locked in with the kick drum is what separates a clean run from a sloppy one. Slash layers in lead work that sits right on top of a dense rhythm track, so tone and pick attack matter more than speed here. The section transitions are the trickiest part: the tempo feels like it shifts in mood even when it does not, so use the Practice Toolbar to isolate each transition slowed down until the movement feels natural. Guns N' Roses wrote this as a deep cut for serious listeners, and it rewards the guitarist who treats it the same way. E Standard tuning means no retuning needed, but the song will absolutely expose any weakness in right-hand consistency.

• The song sits in E minor and E Standard tuning, so no retuning is required, but the extended runtime will test your right-hand endurance across multiple riff sections.
• Palm-muted low-E riffing is central to the rhythm guitar part, and keeping that mute tight and consistent at 120 BPM is the core technical challenge.
• The song spans several structural sections with distinct feels, making section transitions a key thing to isolate and loop slowed down before attempting a full run-through.