Jimi Hendrix - Little Wing - Guitar Tab

Axis: Bold As Love

1967 2:26

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About Little Wing

Few short pieces in the guitar canon pack as much feeling into as little space as "Little Wing." Jimi Hendrix built the song around a flowing chord-melody technique where the thumb frets bass notes on the low strings while the fingers simultaneously pick chord fragments and melodic phrases on the upper strings. That interlocking motion is the real challenge here: your fretting hand has to voice partial chords while your picking hand coordinates melody and bass independently, which is genuinely difficult to keep clean at tempo. The song sits in E minor, giving you a dark, warm foundation, but the chord moves are neither simple triads nor textbook shapes. Pull out the Practice Toolbar to loop and slow down the opening verse figure until the thumb independence clicks. Once the mechanics are in place, the work shifts to dynamics and touch, because playing the notes is only half of it. The phrasing demands restraint, ghost notes, and a very light attack on the high-string melody.

• The signature chord-melody intro asks your fretting-hand thumb to wrap over and fret bass notes, freeing the fingers for simultaneous upper-string melodies.
• The song is in E minor, and many of the chord voicings are open or semi-open shapes that ring sympathetically, so clean fretting is critical.
• Practise the opening figure at half speed using the Practice Toolbar, focusing on thumb-finger independence before adding any vibrato or expressive detail.