U of I Fighting Illini Fight Song

Ok as the college football season starts , I am getting deluged with ads promoting the U of I team, which has some new coach or something, I dunno doesn’t matter. All the commercials made me take a little trip down memory lane, remembering a song we used to do that was based off the illini fight song, so I decided to incorporate it into a lesson. The same riff can also pass for the Braves , FSU etc. fight songs as well, so it’s not exactly an Illinois only type of thing. So here we go:

There are two ways to play it, a mellower one played on the D and G strings, and a heavier version played on the E and A strings in dropped D tuning (the E string is tuned down to D)


mellow way

^ = pulloff
G--7-7-^-5—7-5--2-2---------------------------------|
D-------------------------------5-5-^-3—5-3--0-0----|
A---------------------------------------------------|
E---------------------------------------------------|


pretty simple and straight forward the only thing being tricky is getting the pulloffs between the 7 and 5 and 5 and 3 down and sounding right. I also slide back into the 2 from the 5, its not needed but just sounds good. The timing may give some of you a problem as first, but just run the song in your head over and over until you get it. I used this as the intro with the drums coming in as a build-up into the heavy part. Also the part just needs to really be played with your fingers to get the right sound.

pretty much same deal here only play it with a pick, and make sure you are in dropped D tuning. A little palm muting would probably tighten it up a bit as well, I probably did when we were playing the song, I’ll try and dig up an mp3 of the song to post to help give you some ideas…