Song · Eb Standard tuning

Sweet Child o’ Mine — Guns N’ Roses

For Appetite for Destruction, Slash tuned his Les Paul down a half step to Eb standard — the same small retune Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan built entire careers on. The famous arpeggiated intro is fingered exactly like the everyday open D–C–G chord shapes every beginner learns, rolled note by note across the strings rather than strummed. Because the whole guitar sits a semitone low, though, what actually sounds is C⁠#⁠–B–F⁠#⁠: the shapes are unchanged, the pitch just isn’t.

The verse repeats that same D–C–G–D shape cycle under the vocal; the chorus swaps in an A–C–D shape sequence (concert A⁠b⁠–B–C⁠#⁠) under the “whoa oh, oh, sweet child o’ mine” hook. The arpeggio below is the riff most identified with the song and the one guitarists reach for first.

This is the intro/verse arpeggio as commonly transcribed — the D–C–G–D shapes players cite, sounding a half step flatter in Eb standard — not a note-for-note copy of any one tab. Open the progression below to hear the real Eb-standard pitch, not the shape name.