Somewhere in a dusty corner of the guitar rulebook it says that if you let an open string ring against a note you slide around above it, people will assume you have been touched by the ghost of Slash. This lick leans into that assumption with zero shame — it is, by my own honest admission, a wannabe "Sweet Child O' Mine" line, and I regret nothing.
It is a 17-second clip pulled straight out of "Oath Taker" by my band Atomic Symphony: a sliding open string lick where the open strings chime like a doorbell nobody answers while the fretted notes cascade up the neck. Bright, rolling, and secretly a great way to clean up your position shifts. There is a PDF and Guitar Pro file if you would rather read the notes than lip-read my fingers.
How this sliding open string lick works
The magic is an old trick dressed in new jeans: the open string acts as a pedal tone, a fixed pitch that keeps ringing no matter what you do above it. You pick a fretted note, then a neighbouring open string, then slide the fretted shape up to the next scale tone and do it again. Because the open string keeps sustaining while the next fretted note arrives, the two overlap and blur into that bell-like, harp-ish cascade — the exact overlap that makes the "Sweet Child O' Mine" intro sound like water running downhill rather than someone plonking one note at a time.
Concrete takeaway: keep the open string ringing and let it overlap with the fretted note deliberately — do not choke it. Move the fretted notes by sliding instead of jumping, and your open-string line instantly sounds smoother while quietly drilling the position shifts most players fumble. If you want to turn this into your own phrase, it is the same recipe I use for building licks from scratch.
Fair warning: once this lands under your fingers you will slide open strings into everything, including songs that filed a restraining order against Guns N' Roses years ago. Worth it. The PDF, the Guitar Pro file, and my original videos are waiting for you over on Patreon.