I've been listening to the multitrack of this song to try and sort the possible recording process. Here's what I think happened: Basic track is - acoustic guitar playing along with pitter-patter. No full kit. The reasons are that the pitter-patter continues for a couple of beats while the kit does its lead-in fills. This is just not possible for a drummer with anything less than four arms! This is virtually impossible to hear on the mixed song, but if you isolate the (two) drum tracks it's pretty obvious. Overdubs - 1st electric guitar, Bass & Kit. You can hear the electric guitar spill in the Bass part (sounds like headphone spill to me), so Jones definitely didn't play along with the acoustic and the pitter-patter in the basic track. You can also make out Bass spill in the full kit sound - so they played together. There's definite Bass spill in the 1st electric guitar part too. This all points to the full band playing over the acoustic/pitter-patter tracks. Unsure if the main vocals were done at this time, but it's possible.

Do a search on YouTube. They're not difficult to find

I think the lesson here is : never lend your vinyl to Ross Halfin, because he likes pouring stuff over it. Or did he mean 'poring'? Does nobody use spellcheck nowadays? I know it's a petty thing, but if you're going to charge huge amounts of money for a book, at the very least get someone to proofread it for you.

Play a Dm chord at fret 5 (Am chord shape). Then leave your first finger barreing all the strings (except the low E) at fret 5 and take away your middle, ring and pinky fingers (a D9sus). Alternate between these two chords and you've got the backbone of it. Occasionally the Dm is a Dm7 (move pinky to fret 8 of the high E string). Play a bit with a Dm pentatonic scale at fret 5, and you'll soon find the single note bit (it starts on the D string, fret 5). Use your ears. It's far better than reading some dodgy Tab.

The news was apparently first broken by Phil's son, and seems to have made no impact in the mainstream news at all. A bit sad that Plant has made no comment, but then he didn't have anything particularly nice about to say about Johnstone for quite a long while after their songwriting partnership dissolved. (But then he's always been a bit disdainful about past collaborators...).

Just seen on Facebook that Phil Johnstone has died. He was keyboard player and writer with Robert Plant during the Now and Zen, Manic Nirvana and Fate of Nations years. This was posted by The Levellers on their Beautiful Days Festival page earlier today: Very sad to hear of the passing of festival friend Phil Johnstone this weekend. Songwriter, pianist, guitarist and producer Phil has been part of the Beautiful Days and Levellers family for many years. Phil originally recorded and produced the 1995 concept album Freeborn John by Rev Hammer and was a key player when the historical folk opera had its live premiere at Beautiful Days in 2005. Phil returned with Rev Hammer and an all-star cast for another one-off performance at the festival in 2015 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original release. Phil and Rev Hammer also curated and performed in the annual, over-exuberant live adventure that was "The Fabulous Good Time Party Boys’ for 8 years from 2006 to 2013 in The Big Top. Phil achieved significant success as a recording engineer, music producer, songwriter and musician. He wrote and played in the band The 45’s and then went on to work with Robert Plant for many years. Phil first worked with Plant on the 1988 album Now and Zen which he co-produced and mostly co-wrote. Phil also wrote songs for Plant’s follow-up albums Manic Nirvana and 1993’s Fate of Nations. As well as a number of other writing and producing credits over the years he co-wrote the whole of the Levellers' 2000 album Hello Pig. Devon-based Phil was also the Academy of Music & Sound in Exeter’s first trainer/lecturer in recording techniques and music production. Phil Johnstone was one of a kind. He was a larger-than-life character who will be greatly missed by all who knew him. Our sincerest condolences and thoughts are with his friends and family - particularly his wife and children whom he adored. RIP Phil

Going onstage knowing that your voice is shagged, and playing for over 2 hours. And obviously doing the same thing repeatedly until his vocal cords were so damaged that he needed surgery. And then still continuing before his voice was properly healed - to the point of starting a tour in 1975 with a cold, knowing the previous damage that had been done by doing the same thing! It sounds insane. it’s a wonder Plant can speak nowadays, let alone sing.

Never did a complete version of Good Times Bad Times whilst Bonzo was alive. Don't think they ever did "Your Time is Gonna Come'. No 'Living Loving Maid' (Page dislikes it). No 'Hats off...'. No "Custard Pie' (a REAL shame), No full version of 'The Rover'. No 'Houses of the Holy'. No 'In The Light' (Jones didn't trust his synthesiser to stay in tune). No 'Night Flight'. 'For Your Life' only at the O2. No 'Royal Orleans', no 'Candy Store Rock', no 'Hots on for nowhere', no 'Tea for one'. 'Carouselambra' only as a partial rehearsal recording. No "Fool in the rain', No 'I'm Gonna Crawl', No 'Southbound Saurez. Loads, basically.

So... Friends is ok, the fanfare section in Stairway is ok, Black Dog is ok, Four Sticks is ok, the intro to Over The Hills is ok, The Crunge is ok, The Ocean is ok, but Candy Store Rock 'makes no sense' because of a bad tape splice? Come on! All of those other songs have portions where the metre changes from an even to an odd time signature, or beats are dropped/added. There's enough of them that it could be considered one of the trademarks of the band!

Firstly - the intro to OTHAFA is very idiosyncratic (as is much of Page’s playing) and not at all easy from a rhythm point of view. I wouldn’t recommend trying this tune to anyone who: doesn’t know all their ‘open position’ chords; isn’t able to smoothly move between those chords; isn’t comfortable moving from chords to single notes and vice versa; isn’t comfortable with different strumming patterns and alternate picking; isn’t comfortable with hammer-ons and pull-offs... the list goes on. Simply put, it’s hard. As for the rest... it all depends on the student and their interests and abilities, as to what happens when, and how things get taught. You do need to learn your open chords, distinguish between major and minor, and be able change easily between one chord and another. Learning some scales can also be useful because they help you to be able to move your fingers independently. ‘Learning by doing’ is the only way to learn any musical instrument. It’s like learning to drive - you can read about it, talk to people about it, watch people doing it.... but until you actually sit there and do it, and learn over time and with repetition what you have to do with you eyes, your ears, your arms and your legs, you don’t really have a clue what ‘driving’ actually involves. Learning ‘theory’ can be useful (and it depends on what you mean by ‘theory’) but isn’t strictly necessary (to use the car analogy again, you don’t need to know how a four stroke engine works in order to drive a car). Using tablature or standard notation can be useful but isn’t strictly necessary - I learned to play the guitar ‘by ear’ and didn’t discover tablature until I was in my 20’s - It all depends what you want from the guitar and your playing. The best advice I can give you is this: Take it slowly. Be patient with yourself. At the beginning learning the guitar is uncomfortable on the fingers, and co-ordinating both hands can be challenging. Frustration is going to happen, but doing things slowly and over-and-over again is the only way get through it. Repetition is your best friend - your aim is to build muscle memory, and repeating actions methodically and slowly (at first) is the best way to do this. Anyone who tells you there are hacks or shortcuts is lying to you. Lots of practise is the only way to improve. Get a good teacher who listens and adapts to your way of learning, and can stop you from doing things that aren’t helpful or will give you long-term injuries. (Some things can seem ridiculously difficult until it’s pointed out that if you put this finger here instead of that finger..... and that’s why teachers can be useful!) Most importantly listen to lots of music. Listening is the most powerful tool available to any musician. I’ve heard guitarists with amazing, mind-blowing technique who are utterly incapable of playing in a band because they learn their part, put their head down and all they hear is what they’re playing, not what the other musicians in the band are doing and how to make all the parts fit together. If you’re an absolute beginner and want to look at some excellent tutorial videos check out justinguitar.com. I’m not affiliated with him in any way, but I met him back in the late 90’s when he was playing in a Stones tribute band and he’s a great player and a fantastic teacher. Good luck!

Dude. My apologies. There are soooo many complete tits on this forum that it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff sometimes. Looking at the comments on Marty's videos tells me that enough people have noticed that he is mostly er.. 'less than accurate' that my voice will get lost in that ocean too... If you're not going to play note for note for fear of copyright infractions you need to state that clearly at the beginning of the video. Students, as you well know, are often lazy and are always looking for the shortcut. Explaining that the only way to get good is the hard way never goes down well. Explaining that online tablature is wrong 99% of the time also goes down badly. Explaining that listening is a better tool than videos and books is another hard one. If I'd had the ability to play the records I learned from at 1/2 speed but with the correct pitch when I was learning.... I could have saved money on buying new tape machines to replace the ones I broke. The reason I commented here is because, as a teacher I know it's best to learn things right the first time. Mistakes are easily embedded into muscle memory and are time consuming and boring to fix. Stay well, and let's hope we can play in the outside world once again very soon.

This guy gets it right :

If you're going to teach somebody something first learn it right, then teach it right. Sarcastic comments like that don't make a wrong thing right. I haven't got the time, the video gear or the inclination to compete with the ocean of videos out there. There are a few video tutorials out there that get it right, but they're, sadly, in the minority. It annoys me that a big trusted site like Premiere Guitars, using a big trusted name like Marty Schwartz teach things wrong - especially for such an iconic song. And then people who are obviously guitarists, like you, always give snarky comments when it's pointed out. Or did you not notice that he's playing it wrong? I just tell my students to use their ears. Play along with the song you want to learn and work it out for yourself first. If you get stuck watch a few videos pre-armed with the knowledge that the huge majority will show you something that's wrong, but with the hope that they've got the bit you're stuck on right! There are some excellent general tutorial videos out there for learners - Justinguitar is excellent. Paul Davids is also very good, but sadly you really have to trawl through the dross to find them.

Aaargh! Incorrect timing on intro (he keeps adding a beat!!!), incorrect chords in the verse. It's like he listened to the song once about 15 years ago and this is how he remembered it. If you're going to do tutorials on a song, the least you can do is check you're playing it right first 🤬

He sings “see how they run” in the middle section. Tenuous, yes. But true.

Reverb is generally (but not always) added at mixdown. It won't be tracked, but will be used as a buss effect during the mixing process and only printed onto the mixed master tape. You might want to do a little bit of reading about signal flow on a mixing desk and how and why 'buss' and 'insert' effects are implemented. I can point you at some useful resources if you're interested. The Rolling Stones mobile may have had some basic reverb units (spring reverb probably. Plate reverbs are way too big, heavy and delicate to put in a mobile studio) to help with tracking vocals (for the benefit of the singer, rather than printing onto the track) and rough reference mixes. Finding out where each album was mixed, rather than where it was recorded, will answer your question. Generally it would have been a studio with a high end plate reverb. By the time of ITTOD and definitely on CODA a Lexicon digital reverb was used (I recall somewhere reading about how shocked Jimmy saw at the price of the Lexicon that was bought for The Sol studios and insisted on using it on everything so he got his moneys worth! Might have been an interview with Stuart Epps? Steve Jones might have it on file somewhere)

'Thank You' has some acoustic 12 string, really clear at the beginning. Descending phrase in 'Kashmir' has an electric 12 string. 'Carouselambra' has the only released studio use of the EDS1275 doubleneck - the 12 string chimes in at about 4 minute mark, just before the 'Where was you word?....'. section. Other than that, I think you've got all the rest.

Absolutely this!

Is it in G major? Sort of. is it in Am? Sort of. You’ve discovered one of the interesting things about trying to describe ‘popular’ music in terms of ‘keys’. Look at how the different sections of the song ‘feel’: The verses have a minor, slightly mournful feel to them. The choruses are more major in their tonality, and the solo starts of minor and ends feeling major. There is a common thread though, and that’s the notes that are used in the melody. Here’s the lyrics and the melody notes used underneath: Measuring a summer’s day C. D. C. B B. A. A Only find it slips away to grey, the hours they bring me pain C. D. C. B B. A. A. G. G. A. A. G. G. F#.. F# There’s a whole scale there: ABCDEF#G. The F# suggests G major. But it sounds like it’s a minor key? The relative minor of G is Em. But there are no Em chords and no B chords (chords i and V in Em and you’re going to struggle not using those chords in that key). So something else is going on How is the melody harmonised? It’s Am, G and D. Then Am, G, D, C; C, G with a B bass, Am; Am, G, D. Both sequences end on D and sound ‘finished’... so we could assume D is the root and our scale becomes: D,E,F#,G,A,B,C - almost D major but with a flattened 7th. This is a mode - and it’s the Mixolydian mode. D is chord I, G is chord IV, and Am is chord v. (You could also choose the Am chord as I and harmonise this section in the Dorian mode instead... A,B,C,D,E,F#,G - flat 3rd and sharp 6th. But if you do that the Chorus makes less sense). The chorus happens, and there’s a change of feel - very major. Not so modal any more, this is a G major chorus (I,V,IV,V,I in G).... ending on a D to take it back into D mixolydian. Another verse and then the solo, where something else happens! Two new chords F, and E - both major chords, and neither fit in the chords you construct in D mixolydian or G major, because there’s an F natural and a G sharp: A,B,C,D,E,F,G#... which is A minor. So... if you were going to write Tangerine as a piece of notation you could write it in C major and add loads of F#’s, and the occasional G#; you could write it in G major (probably the easiest way to notate it) and add the odd F natural and G#; or you could be really awkward and write it in D major with lots of C naturals, and the odd F natural and G#.... So, it’s kind of in G major, and kind of in A minor (and sort of kind of in D major...) depending on how you want to look at it! D mixolydian with an A minor section too.... Does you brain hurt yet?

There are three chords: G, C and D. Play along with it - you'll soon work it out.

Listen to music recorded by other bands that recorded in the same studios as Zep used during the same period. Do they sound murky or muddy? That should answer your question. (This is actually a bit of a red herring... because Zep used studios all over the place, as well as the Ronnie Lane and The Rolling Stones mobile studios, often recording basic tracks in one studio and overdubs in another! But I digress....) it’s a blend of engineering choices, equipment choices, mixing choices, mastering choices, and a result of the hearing of everyone involved in all of those parts of the recording process. Some people like bright, clinical sounding records, some like dark, warm sounding records. Your ‘murky or muddy’ is another persons ‘thick and warm’. In my opinion the only song that really does sound murky is ‘four sticks’. The only palpable issues with the recording technology of the time is the way they had to deal with bass response (Too much bass and the needle skips out of the groove on an LP) and the fact that your songs with the greatest dynamic range have to be nearer the outside edge of an album (due to the physics of vinyl records - angular velocities and track-packing etc.). They were unique in that they had the same producer throughout their career, who was also a band member. This is both an asset - for consistency of production values and overal continuity of sound - and a liability, because playing loads of really loud concerts in front of stacks of amplifiers for hours at a time is not going to do great things for your hearing. (This may be another explanation for the brightness of the sound of the ‘Presence’ recordings.)

I meant comment on this too, but I forgot. This is actually a really interesting bit of recording, used a lot nowadays. There’s actually only one guitar here (the only obvious overdub is when the guitar sound changes during the solos)... but the signal has been split and sent to two different amplifiers - one with a fuzzy tone, one with a cleaner tone, each recorded to a different track. It would literally be physically impossible to play that slide guitar part exactly the same twice, without making a single mistake or going out of sync over the duration of an eleven minute song. A simple case of record as a band, overdub the solos (and maybe the vocals... you never know...) and Bob’s your uncle. Well, almost. If you compare the companion disc version with the album version I think there’s a bit of tape editing going on in there too. There’s a lot more of that going on in every Zep album than you’d think! Anyway... nowadays a producer might use a technique called re-amping to achieve a similar sound. What you do is record the guitar signal directly to one track as well as recording the amp used during the recording session. During production this gives you the opportunity to send the clean guitar signal to a different amp to reinforce/improve/change the sound, or to double up the part. Very easy to do with digital recording as you’re not so limited with the number of tracks you have available, and you have a far lower noise floor and a greater dynamic range than even the best analogue tape will ever give you.

Not an oversimplification at all. As a real-world example, here's the actual track setup for Ramble On (the tracks might not be in the order the are on the original multitrack tape, but they are (copies of) the original multi's and it's how I've got them arranged in my studio): Track 1: Acoustic guitar Track 2: Bass (Judging by the spill that can be heard it was recorded simultaneously with Drums and acoustic guitar) Track 3: Drums L Track 4: Drums R Track 5: Electric guitar - obviously recorded as an overdub, but it was recorded on a pristine empty track, so only first gen. tape hiss - same as the Bass, Drums and Acoustic Guitar. Adding this overdub has not added any more tape hiss than was already there, and the same goes for the following overdubs:- Track 6: Guitar overdub - twinkly guitar but in the pre-chorus, plus one part of the harmony guitar solo - again an obvious overdub (it says so on the track sheet), again recorded on a pristine track so, again, only 1st gen. tape hiss. Track 7: Vocal - very obviously not recorded at the same time the rest of the band were tracking (the spill you can hear contains acoustic guitar, electric guitar and harmony solo), so an overdub. Again, only 1st gen. tape hiss. Track 8: Vocal doing a double of 'Ramble On' for the chorus, plus second part of harmony guitar solo. Again an overdub, but only 1st gen. tape hiss. So in this song: 1: no need to bounce any tracks to another and add generational noise; 2: only first generation hiss on EVERY TRACK; 3: only 8 tracks available; and there are still points with four guitars playing simultaneously, thanks to good planning of what each track would be used for. Just to reiterate: overdubbing on a pristine track will not add any more tape hiss than is already there. So that covers: Next point: No. Black Dog has 3 quite distinct guitar parts in all. One panned hard left, one panned hard right, and finally the solo. The 'thick' sound is all down to how it was recorded, and how the mixing engineer dealt with processing those tracks during mixdown. Lots of people (you, and a few people I have worked with amongst them) seem to think that you fatten up a guitar sound by recording multiple stacked version of the same part. Weirdly that can actually make a track sound thinner, and usually two versions of the same part recorded with different amps/guitars and panned apart sounds much fatter than 5 guitars playing the same thing - which, depending on the guitarist can often end up sounding like a right mess. I have done, for over 40 years. I've covered this above - overdubbing does NOT (necessarily) mean more hiss. The apparent 'muddiness' is not down to fidelity, it's down to eq choice during tracking and at mixdown, which means that's exactly how Mr. Page wanted it to sound. "Celebration Day" is definitely complex, but there are only ever 3 guitars playing at once, usually panned hard Left and Right, sometimes one in the middle too. You're probably going to say 'but the guitar solo is surely two guitars - I can hear different sounds in each ear'. But.... they are the same part, the same track, split onto two channels on the desk at mixdown - one panned left, one panned right and both treated with different eq/delay/reverb/compression - another good way to make one part sound BIG. Kevin Shirley used this technique a LOT on HTWWW. So I count 2 tracks of drums (so they can be stereo), 1 track of bass, 1 track of vocals, 3 tracks of guitar, leaving one track free for the synth drone and the guitar solo. No need to bounce, no need to have anything other than 1st gen. tape hiss. "Dancing Days" is possibly four guitars (or three guitars and a synth) at it's most dense, but again : 2 drum tracks, 1 bass, 1 vocal is only 4 tracks, so plenty of room for four guitars. "Ten Years Gone" - Wikipedia says Page recorded 14 guitar parts for the harmony section. I think that's rubbish.. well certainly an overexaggeration. However this is the first track you've mention that probably does have some track bouncing involved. Towards the very end there are very clearly two guitars going on in each ear, and then another starts panned centrally. That's 5 distinct guitar parts, and because it's recorded on 8 track tape, there's obviously not enough discrete tracks for: 2 drums, 1 bass, 1 vocal, 5 guitars and a backing vocal, so somethings going on here. I reckon two guitars were bounced to one track and another two guitars to another track, leaving two free. One for BV's, one for the extra guitar at the end. It's worth noting that 'Ten Years Gone' is considerably hisser than many of the other tracks on Physical Graffiti, so that's probably down to the two second generation bounced tracks. It's also worth noting at this point that they didn't have to go through the rigamarole of bouncing all 8 tracks to a separate tape machine - if you haven't filled all 8 tracks you can submix any (or all) of the other tracks onto an empty one and then re-use the tracks you have bounced from. This is a great way of ensuring you don't get 2nd. gen. hiss on all the tracks - only the bits of a track where you've had to do a bounce. You might lose a bit of fidelity on the re-used tracks - depends how 'hot' you recorded the original signal. By the time they got to 'Achilles' there were not only improvements in noise reduction, but they were also using 16 track tape. Much more 1st. gen. tape to record on. They may have decided by then to record the drums on more than two tracks.... but I doubt it somehow. Page seems to be a 'get the sound right in the room and track it' type of producer, rather than spend hours making decisions on what compressor to use on the snare drum at mixdown etc.... Even 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which was recorded on 24 track tape (I've got a copy of that multi too....) only has two tracks of drums. So, based on their usual formula: 2 drum tracks, 1 bass, 1 guitar tracked with the band, 1 vocal - that leaves 11 pristine tracks for overdubs. Page was using a much less 'thick' guitar sound and going for 'glassier' tones generally at this time too - less thick means less frequency spectrum filled, which means everything sounds a bit more roomy and separate. That's be another reason why it sounds cleaner. I did cover this in my previous post: Sly Stone was notorious for going out, getting wasted, inviting a load of randoms to record their parts on the master multi tracks, and then having to erase them the next day. Totally ruined the tape because of a) too much playback, and b) too much erasing and re-recording. Yes - the multitrack harmony vocals are a nightmare to navigate - their mix engineer had an unenviable job sorting that lot out. Multiple nested bounces, and because they did it all on one 24 track tape there are no 1st gen. versions of those vocal parts available any more, so they couldn't do what Giles Martin has done with The Beatles back catalogue (they kept EVERYTHING) - go and find the earliest generation of each part and piece it together with Pro-Tools to do fabulous remixes with only one gen. of tape hiss. Again, shows the skill and diligence of those engineers at Abbey Road. Finally: That's because Zep generally prepared LOTS before going into the studio. Most of the arrangements will have been really well worked out, rehearsed and sorted LONG before they went into the recording studio. Why waste time and money pratting about in a recording studio trying to figure out parts? Musicians get bored/drunk/stoned and don't stay focussed if you spend too much time recording - you won't get the best, freshest performance. Work it all out first, in a much cheaper rehearsal studio. Use as little studio time as possible, spend as little money as possible. The end product sounds better, because it's well rehearsed and not made up on the spot, and also you can use that time to plan how best to use the limited track space available to you. I think that Zep were one of the most successful bands that literally spent the absolute least time possible in the recording studio. Some bands used the studio as a composition tool : The Beatles, 10CC, Queen to some extent, Jimi Hendrix after Electric LadyLand was built.... but that's a really expensive way of recording an album, unless you own the studio or in The Beatles case, your record company gives you carte blanche and a bottomless cheque book.

No you don't..... Unless you do it like The Beatles had to. Most of their output was recorded on 4-track tape. If you filled the four tracks up and wanted to overdub some more you had to do a submix (or a bounce) to a second tape machine - hence adding a second generation of tape hiss. For example : Track 1: drums Track2: bass Track3: guitar Track4: vocal You want to add some backing vocals and a tambourine... But you've run out of tracks. So you could send a mixed signal (sometimes called a stem) of drums, bass and guitar to track 1 on a second tape machine, and the vocals to track 2, leaving you tracks 3 and 4 to record Backing vocals and tambourine, like this: Track 1: mixed drums, bass and guitar Track 2: vocal Track 3: backing vocal Track 4: tambourine The techs at Abbey Road were truly excellent at their job, so generational noise was kept at a minimum, but The Beatles went too far with some songs. As an example you can really hear the generational noise building up towards the end of 'She's So Heavy'. Most of Zeppelin's output was recorded on 8 track tape. With careful planning there is no need for bouncing 2 or more tracks onto 1, so no need whatsoever to add generational tape noise.... Until you mix the track and record it to a stereo master tape. (So... Even the best quality analogue master tapes are 2nd generation... before they even get sent to be ‘Mastered’ which is a third generation of tape hiss! This is why some people liked (and still like to) master directly to acetate. Jack White is one of the modern proponents of this technique). A typical zep multitrack might look like this: Track 1 & 2: drums Track 3: bass Track 4: guitar Track 5: guitar overdub 1 Track 6: vocal Track 7: backing vocal Track 8: guitar overdub 2 and solo No need to bounce, no need to add generational tape hiss. The only other noise that will be added during initial recording, or overdubs, is hiss and hum from Amps, electrical (Johnson) noise added by compressors and other effects, the path of the signal through the desk and the tape machines' electronics, and eventual loss of high frequency response of you play the tape back too many times or do too many takes an overdub (this is why Sly and the family stone's recordings are so muffled sounding) By the time they got to Presence I think they were on 16 track tape, and ITTOD was probably 24 tracks... So ample room for recorded sources without having to resort to bouncing tracks and adding noise.

As you've said, it's in A. 1st 'chord' is an implied Am (no root, so just C and E - almost a first inversion, but it's only two notes so it's not really a chord... There's no G present so it's not a C chord... If you're putting the G in you're playing too many notes!) 2nd 'chord' makes the minor 3rd (C) a major 3rd (C#) so A major (with the C# at the bottom, so again almost a first inversion). 3rd 'chord' is cementing the riff into A with an A5, and the riff eventually ends on a fully realised A6 chord (AEAC#F#). You wouldn't describe the C as a #9 (especially as the bottom note of a chord) it would be a simple b3. If there was a major third in the chord you could then get away with thinking it was a 9th, but it's simply a diad, or a two note interval The chord you seem to be playing at that point would be a C#min b5 or a C#dim without the 7th (root, b3, b5, or C# E G), which is interesting in itself, but incorrect. It's definitely blues based - the riff is a truncated part of the beginning section of Bring It On Home, the main riff for Rock and Roll and can also be heard in Boogie With Stu.... If you know what you're listening for!