Netflix put a cello in Wednesday Addams' hands, had her saw out Paint It Black on a rooftop, and single-handedly convinced a whole generation that a 1966 Rolling Stones song is peak goth. I am here to gently break the news that you do not need a cello, a rooftop, or a black wardrobe to play it — you need six strings and a mildly gloomy afternoon.
This is a short, easy solo-guitar arrangement of the Paint It Black riff: melody up top, a low open E droning underneath, so one guitar does the job of a band. It is beginner-friendly, it is recognizable from the first three notes, and yes, it will make your neighbours think something ominous is about to happen.
How the Paint It Black riff works
The whole thing lives in E minor, and the secret to that creepy, almost Middle-Eastern flavour is not the melody — it is one chord. When the harmony leans on a B7 pulling back to E minor, that B7 hides a D#, a leading tone that does not belong to plain E minor. That single raised note is the fingerprint of harmonic minor, and it is exactly why the riff sounds sinister rather than just sad. Same trick every horror-movie composer uses; the Stones just did it with a sitar.
The playable takeaway: keep that low open E ringing while your fretting hand handles the descending melody on the higher strings. One string droning, one string singing, and suddenly a single guitar sounds like a riff plus a bass line — the same open-string drone trick that makes so many "how is he playing all that at once?" arrangements work. Grab the tab and Guitar Pro file, take it slow, and let the low string do the heavy lifting.
Play it well and you get Wednesday-level menace; play it badly and you get "why is the cat hiding." Either way, more of these arrangements (Guitar Pro files included) live on my Patreon.