♫musicjinni

Black Rain by Soundgarden - Guitar lesson

video thumbnail
Re-upload because the first one got corrupted beyond watchability.

Black Rain was released in 2010 and was Soundgarden's first single since 1997. It was however initially recorded during the Badmotorfinger sessions in 1991 and scrapped from the album due to frustrations with songwriting. When the band got back together again in 2010, they revisited the
demo with Adam Kasper, which would then also bereleased on the 2016 25th anniversary
re-issue of Badmotorfinger. It's title was "Black Days", with the chorus lyrics "Fell on black days", rather than the ultimate "Cry on, black rain". Chris Cornell would later use said lyrics to write the 1994 Superunknown song of the same title. The band re-arranged the song and while the vocals in the chorus were recorded by Chris in 2010, the rest are from 1991!

Kim added some pretty gnarly guitar overdubs. The two rhythm guitars are playing mostly the same thing before they vary. One will play power chords and the high octave ornamentations, the other will play major and suspended chords and the low octave. Then there’s also two lead guitars! The pre-dominant time signatures seem to be 9/8 and 3/4. The tuning is drop D.

This is my transcript of the 5:24 long full album version, found on the compilations Telephantasm from 2010 and Echo of Miles: Scattered Tracks Across the Path from 2014. A 4:09 shortened radio edit with most of the intro and all of the outro cut was also released and featured in the video games Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and Guitar Hero Live.

I cut the playalong at the end together from the two intro segments, the second verse, first interlude, second pre-chorus, second chorus and the outro to demonstrate everything that is going on with the guitar tracks.
Disclaimer DMCA