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The Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet with Butterfly Wings - Guitar Tab

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100%

Tools

BPM
Key B minor
The Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet with Butterfly Wings guitar tab video
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Amp Settings

Classic Rock

Gain6
Bass6
Mid7
Treble6
Presence5
Master7
AI tone preset

AI-selected preset based on genre and era — adjust the knobs to taste.

Roll back the gain slightly and pick near the neck for a warmer, more open crunch.
The Smashing Pumpkins Alternative Rock B minor
Capo Advisor 0 B minor · Original key

About Bullet with Butterfly Wings

Few riffs in 1990s Alternative Rock hit as hard as the opening of this one. Billy Corgan's heavily distorted, mid-scooped tone punches in at 128 BPM and stays relentless throughout, so your right hand needs to lock in with a tight, consistent downstroke attack before you even think about the fills. The song sits in B minor in E Standard tuning, which means no retuning required, but the low-end aggression in the riff demands that you keep your fretting hand relaxed or fatigue will catch up with you fast. The verse riff itself is deceptively simple on paper, yet the rhythm is unforgiving: rushing even slightly collapses the menacing groove that makes the track work. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop that main riff slowed down until the pick attack feels automatic, then bring it back up to tempo. The Smashing Pumpkins layer guitars heavily on the recording, so expect some thinning-out when you play it solo, and compensate with tone rather than extra gain.

  • The main riff runs in B minor in E Standard tuning, so no alternate tuning is needed, but a mid-scooped distortion tone is essential to match the recording.
  • Right-hand stamina is the core challenge: the driving, heavily distorted rhythm part sustains a relentless eighth-note pulse at 128 BPM for most of the song.
  • Looping the verse riff slowed down is the most efficient way to clean up the pick-attack consistency before pushing back to full tempo.

How to Play Bullet with Butterfly Wings

Tuning: E Standard · Key: B minor · Tempo: 128 BPM

Use the section loop to isolate a passage, drop the speed below 100%, and set the metronome to 128 BPM to build it up to tempo.

Fender Stratocaster
Guitar

Fender Stratocaster

Billy Corgan's primary weapon, particularly his late-'70s hardtail model with stock single-coils that create the Pumpkins' signature scooped, fizzy fuzz tone when slammed into a Big Muff. The single-coil bridge pickup delivers that aggressive high-end sizzle and cutting sustain central to their distorted sound.

Fender Telecaster
Guitar

Fender Telecaster

James Iha's go-to rhythm guitar, providing bright, cutting tones that complement Corgan's Strat-based layers and add definition to the band's wall-of-sound approach without sacrificing the clarity needed in their dense arrangements.

Gibson Les Paul Standard
Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Standard

Corgan used Les Pauls with stock PAF-style humbuckers for warmer, thicker lead tones that contrast with his Strat's fizz, allowing him to shift between aggressive rhythm fuzz and fat, sustaining solos throughout the Pumpkins' catalog.

Gibson Les Paul Custom
Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Custom

A variation of Corgan's Les Paul arsenal, the Custom offered similar warm humbucker character for lead work while its thicker body resonance provided deeper low-end support for the band's heavier passages on later recordings.

Gibson ES-335
Guitar

Gibson ES-335

Corgan deployed this semi-hollow body for textured, slightly more organic tones that provided sonic variety beyond his Strat and Les Paul, particularly useful for cleaner, more nuanced passages that needed definition without harsh high-end artifacts.

Marshall JCM800
Amp

Marshall JCM800

The core of Corgan's distortion tone, cranked to the edge of breakup and pushed harder by his Big Muff pedal, the JCM800's natural tube compression and high-volume sustain became synonymous with the Pumpkins' crushing wall-of-sound aesthetic.

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