Rush - Limelight - Guitar Lesson

Moving Pictures (2011 Remaster)

1981 4:20

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About Limelight

Few rock songs from 1981 demand as much from a guitarist as "Limelight" does right from bar one. Alex Lifeson's opening arpeggio figure, picked cleanly in E major over a driving rhythm, sets the tone: precise articulation matters more here than raw speed. The verse riff sits in a mid-tempo groove at 120 BPM in E Standard tuning, which keeps things accessible, but the chord voicings Lifeson uses are wide and require a confident left-hand stretch to pull off cleanly. The real challenge is balancing that clean, open picking attack against the crunchier rhythm sections without losing the dynamics, since the song shifts between them constantly. If the arpeggiated intro or the lead passages are giving you trouble, use the Practice Toolbar to loop those sections slowed down until the picking pattern feels automatic. Rush sit at the more demanding end of Progressive Rock guitar, and this track is a good test of whether your right-hand control is actually as solid as you think.

• The opening arpeggio pattern in E major requires clean alternate or hybrid picking, as any hesitation in the attack is immediately audible.
• E Standard tuning keeps the song approachable, but Lifeson's wide chord voicings still demand good left-hand stretch and finger independence.
• Balancing clean picked arpeggios against crunchier rhythm passages in the same song is the core technique challenge here.