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Jimmy Page techniques analised?


osoz

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Hi to all you zep fans :yourock:

Been playing about with guitar for 30 years or more, I've now ended up getting serious with my Led Zeppelin playing. I can crank out a few songs but I want to get a deeper insight into Jimmy's playing. I've found a few web articles but many have things like missing diagrams which is driving me nuts, so if anyone knows of good complete web articles or ones that were published in magazines (mag, year and month published so I can try to track them down on ebay) that would be great.

I don't mind just hearing your opinions about his techniques, or what you have learned down the years, it's all good!

My own idea is that a lot of his style was about a killer and versatile right hand, capable of intricate finger picking through to the just plain 'rude'! There was a lot going on with the acoustic strumming with accenting and missed beats which just pours tension into the music.

I've learned by watching a lot of videos he tackled an awful lot of styles with his left thumb hooked well over the top - so the chords in a song like BIGLU rather than being barre chords as might be expected in the traditional sense of the first finger forming the barre, are played with the thumb - a very cool way to introduce the open strings and creating a haunting sound.

But over to you lot...

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Hi to all you zep fans :yourock:

Been playing about with guitar for 30 years or more, I've now ended up getting serious with my Led Zeppelin playing. I can crank out a few songs but I want to get a deeper insight into Jimmy's playing. I've found a few web articles but many have things like missing diagrams which is driving me nuts, so if anyone knows of good complete web articles or ones that were published in magazines (mag, year and month published so I can try to track them down on ebay) that would be great.

I don't mind just hearing your opinions about his techniques, or what you have learned down the years, it's all good!

My own idea is that a lot of his style was about a killer and versatile right hand, capable of intricate finger picking through to the just plain 'rude'! There was a lot going on with the acoustic strumming with accenting and missed beats which just pours tension into the music.

I've learned by watching a lot of videos he tackled an awful lot of styles with his left thumb hooked well over the top - so the chords in a song like BIGLU rather than being barre chords as might be expected in the traditional sense of the first finger forming the barre, are played with the thumb - a very cool way to introduce the open strings and creating a haunting sound.

But over to you lot...

I don't know whether I'm the best person to answer this, but I wanted to say something other than that I also wanted you to correct your spelling...my main impression of Jimmy's technique is simply that he can play the guitar amazingly fast. Most of us will never be able to play that fast so there's no point in trying to emulate it.

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There is lots I've learnt that I initially thought was impossibly fast, but that's what I find interesting about looking deeper into the techniques, which pull-offs, which multiple hammer ons what he was actually doing with his fingers to play like that. I could play nothing but Led Zeppelin for the next 20 years and not even approach a blisteringly quick solo and still not get bored with learning about Jimmy's techniques and approach to playing.

I wish an admin could change that thread title, it's pretty embarrassing!

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I think the reason jimmy is so unique as a guitar player is due to his teaching himself how to play. His innate talent and imagination lent him the ability to play things in a way that classically trained players don't see, it also made him extremely versatile.

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I thought this was a porn post. I think you meant analysed.

I do not know how they spell things in Mordor, but in the United States of America, the correct spelling is ANALYZED. With a Y, not an S.

As to an answer to the original question, I do not play guitar, but if I did, I would say that Jimmy Page is the Master and I would hear (and play) the Master's Call.

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In the UK it is an 's' or 'z' it is interchangeable, shame this thread has ending up with more posts about a typo (however unfortunate it might have been) than discussing the techniques used by Jimmy Page!

I do agree kingzoso regarding the Master's Call. I have to own up to actively avoiding Led Zeppelin for a long time being more into punk/goth but sooner or later as a guitarist I ended looking more and more into JP and wondering why I wasn't smart enough to have started there in the first place.

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Hey oszo, I have been playing for 1 yr, so u are 29 yrs ahead of me. But I already learned trying to replicate another guitarist technique is pointless,you will be swimming against the tide. By now your own technique is ingrained and even an attempt to change it is futile and more pointless. Play the zep songs w/ your own nuances,style and technique. If you think otherwise ,that is o.k. here's a good analogy = progress not regress you will sound great playing azep tune using your technique. All guitarist know that there is 7 ways to Sunday

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Interesting thoughts raytuned, Page though has a unique and smart approach to the guitar that make it interesting to study it, the condensed learning and assimilation of music at the start of his career, the session work and then the use of it in Led Zeppelin remains to me totally fascinating.

My playing was very mediocre before I started to get interested in Jimmy Page. I could though spend hours now happily perfecting a picking technique or accurate chord fingerings and voicings, messing with alternative tuning, it's a pretty endless pot of creativity that Page gave us to think about.

What I was really after was a breakdown of his lead techniques, I know the basics of what he was up to but there must be some articles somewhere that analysed (correct spelling for the UK) his techniques in depth. I've got the time over the next few month to seriously tackle some of the big solos, so a crash course on his techniques would be really welcome.

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Jimmy's lead playing is pretty much all based around the pentatonic blues scales, with a bit of the dorian mode thrown in here and there for colour. He get's a little tricksy with his playing on some of the solos from 'Presence', but for everything else it's actually pretty easy to play once you've worked out where on the neck he is and how he likes to move around.
If you know your blues scales all over the neck - specifically in Am, Em, Cm (SIBLY) & Dm (NQ) - you've already got the tools available to emulate much of his lead work.

I learned to play, exactly as he did, by listening to stuff over and over again and trying to copy it (I've worn quite a few tape decks out in my time!). It's a great way to learn, because it develops your ear and your playing technique at the same time. Personally I avoid tab like the plague, as I rarely find any that's correct. Some of the tab out there is hilariously bad.

It's the way Page put his solos together that's the unique thing - his phrasing is very lyrical.

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Hearing you there woz70 - I get to use Transcribe and save on wearing out tape decks. :stereo:

Technology is great!

And..... the ability to slow something down without changing its pitch is something I would have killed for when I was beginning to learn this stuff.

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Interesting thoughts raytuned, Page though has a unique and smart approach to the guitar that make it interesting to study it, the condensed learning and assimilation of music at the start of his career, the session work and then the use of it in Led Zeppelin remains to me totally fascinating.

My playing was very mediocre before I started to get interested in Jimmy Page. I could though spend hours now happily perfecting a picking technique or accurate chord fingerings and voicings, messing with alternative tuning, it's a pretty endless pot of creativity that Page gave us to think about.

What I was really after was a breakdown of his lead techniques, I know the basics of what he was up to but there must be some articles somewhere that analysed (correct spelling for the UK) his techniques in depth. I've got the time over the next few month to seriously tackle some of the big solos, so a crash course on his techniques would be really welcome.

Ever hear of Star licks? Its tape series used to teach the solo techniques of a lot of guitar players. The Jimmy Page tape is hard to find and he isn't even listed as being one of the musicians to have done one on its wiki page but I have the Jimmy Page StarLicks tape in my collection. It was given to me by a girl I was dating back in 1984.

On the tape Jimmy's licks are played at different speeds so you can really hear what he is doing. I suggest hunting down this tape if you can. There is also a Lick Library DVD of Jimmy doing solos for GTBT, WLL, BD, RR and Stairway. That can be found at Kickass torrents

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Transcribe is a gift from heaven, I remember the days all too well of hours of playing something back over and it being too fast to really get my head around it, then the pitch change when it was slowed down. I have Guitar Pro 6, some of the Led Zeppelin stuff is reasonably accurate, at least a decent framework to work from then check against the recordings.

I'll be searching for the StarLIcks tape and Lick Library DVD today juxtiphi :thumbsup:

Came across this web article:

http://www.guitarworld.com/shred-zeppelin-how-play-jimmy-page

Unfortunately the diagrams are missing from the article, but on the same site:

http://www.guitarworld.com/soloing-strategies-jimmy-page

Which might be of some help to anyone else who's starting out with tackling the solos.

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Lick Library solo DVD arrived today, ooh it's good thanks juxtiphi, I took the whole day out just to start going through it.

Second happy thing today, hearing the rough mix of Whole Lotta Love on the Led Zeppelin II Deluxe Edition, finally can clearly hear what he is playing in the rhythm parts. I would like to think Jimmy knew some of this unreleased material would answer questions guitarists have asked for a long time, no tab I've ever seen does it justice.

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Lick Library solo DVD arrived today, ooh it's good thanks juxtiphi, I took the whole day out just to start going through it.

Second happy thing today, hearing the rough mix of Whole Lotta Love on the Led Zeppelin II Deluxe Edition, finally can clearly hear what he is playing in the rhythm parts. I would like to think Jimmy knew some of this unreleased material would answer questions guitarists have asked for a long time, no tab I've ever seen does it justice.

An interesting tidbit... I've heard later bootlegs where Jimmy plays the WLL riff differently than he originally did. Always wondered why?

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An interesting tidbit... I've heard later bootlegs where Jimmy plays the WLL riff differently than he originally did. Always wondered why?

Are you referring to these?

Probably just something new since they weren't doing the 'Boogie Chillun' section anymore. That's one of the great things about live Zep, the songs were always changing, growing, expanding...

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Are you referring to these?

Probably just something new since they weren't doing the 'Boogie Chillun' section anymore. That's one of the great things about live Zep, the songs were always changing, growing, expanding...

The bridge section is different and I too also love that Zeppelin just jam... I guess what i was referring to was more the right hand technique "seems/sounds" a little more loose than earlier performances...say '69... i was also "analising" ;-) this another way... and it could also be that '77 tone as well... being Pages tone evolved each tour...
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The bridge section is different and I too also love that Zeppelin just jam... I guess what i was referring to was more the right hand technique "seems/sounds" a little more loose than earlier performances...say '69... i was also "analising" ;-) this another way... and it could also be that '77 tone as well... being Pages tone evolved each tour...

Gotcha! ;)

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Those are cool versions, I agree tone is playing a big part in the main riff sounding different, I can't quite make out the palm muted beats which are so much part of the chugging feeling of the studio version, listening I think they are there but masked by more distortion.

I was sort of surprised watching the Royal Albert Hall gig (1970) on the Led Zeppelin DVD today, that sort of 'metal' power chord riff which features in both performances above (but not the studio version) was hinted at, so a variation that must have come quite early on in the life of the live version and was then built on.

It's great here, I never get to talk about this stuff, nobody seems to care much about music these days!

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