The Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar - Guitar Lesson

About Brown Sugar

Open G tuning is the whole story here. Keith Richards famously removes the low E string and works almost entirely off the open chord voicings that tuning hands you, and "Brown Sugar" is one of the clearest examples of that approach in action. The signature riff sits right at the top of the neck in the first few positions, built around a C major chord shape that rings open strings against fretted notes, giving it that loose, slightly clanging character you simply cannot replicate in standard tuning. Getting that feel right takes some adjustment if you have never played in Open G before: the fingerings are unfamiliar and it is easy to mute strings by accident. Slow it down with the Practice Toolbar to get each note of the riff landing clean before you bring it up to the 120 BPM mark. The Rolling Stones built much of their core catalog in this tuning, so nailing it here opens a door to a lot of their other material. If you want context for where this sits stylistically, the Blues Rock genre page is a good place to start.

• The riff is played in Open G tuning, with the low E string removed, exactly as Keith Richards typically set up his guitar.
• The main riff centers on C major voicings that use ringing open strings, so muting technique matters as much as the fretting hand.
• At 120 BPM the groove feels relaxed, but keeping the riff rhythmically tight and consistent across the chord changes is the real challenge.