The Rolling Stones - Ruby Tuesday - Guitar Lesson

About Ruby Tuesday

Few Rolling Stones tracks lean this heavily on a fingerpicked acoustic feel, and the Open G tuning shapes everything about how the song sits under your hands. In Open G, your two lowest strings need to be dropped to get the full chord voicings ringing correctly, so take a moment to confirm your tuning before you start. The melody carries most of the song's character, meaning you need clean, deliberate fretting across C major positions rather than riff-driven aggression. At 120 BPM the tempo is steady but not forgiving of sloppy transitions between chord shapes, particularly where the bass movement beneath the upper strings asks your fretting hand to stretch while keeping higher notes sustained. The Rolling Stones built this track around a delicate interplay of guitar and recorder, so your guitar tone should stay clean and warm throughout. If the chord changes with the moving bass line are tripping you up, use the Practice Toolbar to loop those bars slowed down until the hand positions feel automatic. This sits neatly within the Blues Rock catalogue yet demands a gentler touch than most of that genre's output.

• Open G tuning defines the chord voicings throughout, so dial in your tuning carefully before attempting any of the fingerpicked passages.
• The moving bass lines beneath sustained upper-string notes are the main technical challenge, requiring steady fretting-hand control across C major positions.
• A clean, warm tone suits the song far better than any overdrive, since the arrangement relies on note clarity rather than guitar texture.