woz70
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Posts posted by woz70
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its alternate tuning in studio, standard tuning live, that's the genius of Jimmy
Nope - not standard tuning live.
Studio is DGCGCD
Live is EADADE - which means you only have to re-tune two strings to bring it back to standard for Stairway, rather than all six, as Matjaz pointed out.
It is possible to play in standard, but the very last bit is a real bugger.
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Does anyone have a tip for cleaning strings? The strings on my acoustic are filthy. My fingers are black after playing. Probably from bringing it to the park.
Get yourself some fast-fret.
http://www.zzounds.com/item--GHSMSFF
Or change them.... if they're that filthy they're probably corroded and will start to do some damage to your frets. If you can't remember the last time they were changed, then change them!
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Probably get deleted but strangely enough if Paul did write/play that weird part Page never played it live. Check the boots.
That's not entirely true - you've only got to check out the video of The Firm at the Hammersmith Odeon to see that Page pretty much plays the recorded solo there.
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Now if you want a list...Joking, joking, I swear, I joke.
Geez - I'm British. We invented sarcasm. Anyway, I already have a list of my own.....
It's growing.....
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I think one thing that must be brought to this debate is whether Jimmy Page wanted things rough around the edges.
I heard in interviews he wanted to capture spontaneity, the emotion of the moment, rawness, brutality, human condition - are they all words that could be substituted for 'sloppy' I wonder?
I'm another who has played guitar for more than 30 years, sometimes it is just better on the first run through, it's easy enough to practice a piece over and over until it is 'perfect' but in doing so it seems to lose emotion or turn into nothing more than exercise rather than a piece of music. I honestly feel when I listen to very technical guitarists that I'm listening to a string of exercises played one after the other rather than listening to music.
The more I think about the discussions here the more I see the 'mistakes' as totally essential to his playing style and capturing of the moment in production. It's almost a statement of attitude in itself.
I know he felt restricted as a session musician and was looking to escape the rigidity of perfection for raw emotion in a rock group, it all seems to fit together at some point.
This is a really good point, and very valid.... but there are those who claim that Jimmy is the consummate perfectionist - I think it's very difficult to reconcile perfectionism with 'rough around the edges'. Can you really have it both ways?
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Same for me, and don't worry, if we are at war, you will be the first to know it. I'm not known for holding my punches.
Seriously dude, is that sort of talk even necessary? I know where the permanent ignore button is as well as you do. I thought we were all adults here.
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I happen to think that Hot Dog is a GREAT SONG and adds to the arsenal of styles that Led Zeppelin recorded and played. I’m also rubbed a little the wrong by people who think that he is “sloppy”, I think Guitar wizards are sloppy, because to my ears they play with almost no emotion at all. I could never imagine someone saying that Bode Miller or as someone else pointed out Aryton Senna as sloppy, yet they refer to Jimmy Page in that manner. I find it odd actually.
Well, Page himself has declared his playing as sloppy on more than one occasion.
Let's look at some of the many synonyms of 'Sloppy' and see how it applies to the other technical Guitar Wizards:
"careless, slapdash, untidy, messy, hit-or-miss."
None of them can be described like that - if anything they are the exact opposite, they are defined by their precision, and that's why their music often lacks in emotion - because it might as well have been played by a machine in some cases.
Don't take 'sloppy' as a bad word to describe Page's playing - it is after all one of the things that defines him as a player and makes him truly unique, and without that we'd never have the depth and reach that Zeppelin achieved.
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Great, I'm glad to hear that you weren't trying to be condescending. I haven't played guitar for 35 years, but I have played Monopoly for that long......,at least. Anyway, I'm off to the "Jimmy has Pretty Hair" thread to learn some more stuff.
One thing you can be sure of with me is that there is nothing to read between the lines. I can't be doing with bitchiness or people being snide. There are plenty of people on here for whom English is a second language, so making myself as clear, readable and comprehensible as possible is very important, in my opinion.
I'm trying to give my insights and share my knowledge as somebody who's been involved in playing, writing, analysing and performing music in some form or other for about 38 years. If you want to throw a sulk about what I have to say because you don't agree with it then that's really up to you.
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Maybe your right. I tend to be a bigger fan of Zeppelin's music than most, but that's how I roll. You know me well: I struggle with objectivity, being a smitten fanboy and all. I guess I'll just skip that re-listen and defer to your assessment of my abilities. Ignorance is bliss, and all that.
There's no need to be snide. I'm not calling you a smitten fanboy - If I was going to be that rude, I'd just come out and say it. Nor am I commenting on your listening abilities. I'm simply saying that when you know something so well it's incredibly hard to be objective about it, and I'm as guilty of that as anyone else.
I'm just saying what I hear - if you can't hear the same things as me then that's just one aspect of the wonderful subjectiveness of music that allows different people to get different things from what they hear.
Just because someone doesn't agree with your opinion doesn't mean they're trying to be a dick, or that they think you're a dick.
Did you ever think maybe Jimmy wanted it that way? When I hear the song I get a barroom vibe of a slightly pissed off narrator essentially taking the story of Hey, Hey, What Can I Do and saying, 10 years later, how he got shit on again due to his own stupidity. The vibe the guitar gives the narrative is VERY important to the picture I believe they were trying to paint. One of the traits "later" Jimmy had / has that "early" Jimmy did not is feel for the song as a whole. Jimmy was one of the first hot lead guitarists to leave a solo out of a song because the song did not need it (Kashmir). In 1974 everyone else out there would have put a solo in there somewhere. Jimmy's ability to paint a picture with his arrangements is truly what makes him unique and I believe he was willing to do unorthodox structures in an effort to paint that picture. Jimmy schooled to be an artist, instead he became a sonic artist.
Prince once said i an interview, "Jimmy Page played in color, everyone else in black and white." Prince "gets" it.
I could agree with you if the rest of the arrangement was as scrappy, but JPJ & JB are metronomic and for me the vibe Jimmy brings clashes with what the rest of the band is doing. My opinion is that he's under-rehearsed.
The rest of what you say about him as a player I totally agree with.
Also totally agree with the Prince statement.
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Mmmm, I have been playing for more than 30 years, some of those years professionally and I have played Hot Dog live and I tell you this...good luck. It is a tough song to play, the beginning and exiting riff is a bitch to nail, and if you don't do the pull off's just right forget it. In the studio version I hear one minor mistake in the intro riff and none in the outtro. In the live versions I have heard (both Copenhagen, 1st Kneb, and Vienna 80') he does a good job with it. The solo changes but except for a couple of minor flubs with the Knebworth version nails it. Now when I say nails it I am being subjective because the studio solo is a brilliant mess, just amazing and I remember an interview in 79' with Jimmy about the newly released ITTOD talking about Hot Dog. He specifically says the way the song is played and the solo in particular was done on purpose to give it a "frenzied, rockabilly feel." Maybe he was covering for his mistakes, maybe not but I have indeed disected this song and I feel it was executed perfectly and brilliantly. If I were in the studio as co-engineer I would have said, "fucking brilliant Jimmy, that sounded just like a train ready to fall off the tracks, two wheels in the air, two on the track and the car at a 45 degree angle on a curve yet barely sticking...brilliant!"
To each his own I guess.
I said the intro was a dog (horrible) to play.... I've also been playing for more than 30 years.
On the studio version intro I hear a flub on the E that then slides down to C both times he plays it (little finger not fretting properly), open strings ringing that shouldn't be and there's a general sense of 'argh, this is difficult to play!'. If he was going for the train wreck sound he certainly achieved it...
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I consider myself to be fairly observant, but I don't get all the hate for Hot Dog. I love the song and I don't hear the "issues" that keep getting referred to. Maybe I need to have a close listen again, but nothing will ever change how I feel about that masterful little ditty. It is amazing in its own right.
In my experience taking a step back and listening to something you know better than the back of your hand in a critical way is incredibly difficult. Considering how enamored you are with ITTOD as a whole I doubt that you'll be able to make that step and give it an honest and unbiased appraisal.
I'm not being dismissive of your love of it (each to their own), but I'm coming from the point of view of a guitarist. The riff at the beginning of Hot Dog is actually a bit of a dog to play, but Jimmy muffles and mis-picks badly at least twice and you can almost hear him thinking 'ohshitohshitohshitohshit' as he's playing it. It's one of only three Zep songs I'll actively skip if it plays, mostly because it makes me cringe with embarrassment for Page.
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I have said this before that my pet hate is his sloppy solo on Hot Dog,but I would rather have his solo than have someone like Yngwie Malmsteen or John Petrucci murder it.Don't get me wrong I am impressed by the precision and speed of their ilk but when I hear Page fluff a note or two I know he is only human and adds that bit of charm to his playing.Still I hope there is a different take of Hot Dog on the upcoming companion disc.
P.S.Hendrix ar Isle of Wight,worst case of sloppy playing but he was in a bad space.
Totally agree. From a guitarists point of view 'Hot Dog' is a complete car crash. Apart from the solo, he fumbles the riff at the beginning so badly you'd think he'd only been playing guitar for a few months.
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There's already a site run by the Earl's Court Area Action Group:
http://www.saveearlscourt.com/
However, I fear it may be far too late now to make any difference. -
Pretty amazingly I should think. Frank Zappa wouldn't have employed him unless he was an outstanding musician, and that encompasses far more than the widdly lead work that he's known for.Bottom line though -and I suppose this applies for all these "80's virtuosos"- take Steve Vai's effects gadgetry and seven string custom Ibanez away from him and stick a goddamn Martin D-28 in his hands...how would he fare?
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:-/ confused :-/Yeah his sound is very cool, but it's harder to achieve the sound of 80's virtuosos, in particulary Vai!
Brian Eno is not a guitarist
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Here's a couple of clips demonstrating the difference between Jimmy's 'picking' and 'scrubbing' technique, as I mentioned earlier:
Watch his right hand playing the fast picky stuff at 8:56 (1973)
Now compare to a similar lick played at 11:17 (1988)
I know the Atlantic 40th is nowhere near Jimmy at his best, but it's the clearest example I could find quickly of the scrubby technique. This is a man who does not practice his picking, and is flying by the seat of his pants to play what has become a trademark lick. -
Yeah, but he wanted such a solo in the studio, he did it differently and far better live!
As for some people making a point about Vai and Van Halen, sometimes it would not be bad if besides the phrasing, Jimmy could also play as technical as Vai or Satriani
but he could be very technical in the early years, but still not as much as Vai and Van Halen!
You're missing the point a little bit. Going back to the multi-track separation - you can hear he's not totally happy with the solo (the one we ended up with), that's why he tried a number of different attempts, all less successful than the first. The solo we ended up with on the studio recording was literally the best he could do at the time - the sloppiness was an inherent part of his playing, it certainly wasn't sloppy by design. There's a lot of talk on here about 'Jimmy the perfectionist'. If Jimmy was such a perfectionist he would have had that solo totally worked out and practised it to the point where it was flawless before he even went into the studio. It's a good example of him pushing himself to the limit of his technique, and maybe just beyond, and getting away with it spectacularly.
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You just don't have a case, when you talk live 1968-1972! If you can point five significant mistakes from those releases, I will be very suprised! And studio? Yeah allright I'can't quit you babe and Heartbreaker were on purpose, but what else!??
Read my first post again. I'm talking about a career overview - not a specific period. Sloppy playing does not necessarily mean making mistakes - it's also a stylistic thing, one example of which I gave in the above post. To clarify my point - '68 his playing was damn good for the time and the genre. By '73 his playing had reached its peak, after which there was a general decline in spite of some stellar moments. Up to '73 he really was working hard at his craft. After that his focus turned to the visual stagecraft (and the partying) to the detriment of his playing.
Again a case in point for sloppiness as a stylistic description rather than meaning a slew of mistakes is the Heartbreaker solo - it is sheer brilliance, but it is as sloppy as hell - especially in terms of his picking hand.
if you haven't already, see if you can listen to the available multi-tracks/separations for Heartbreaker from LZII. That solo in the middle section specifically. He tried that solo more than a few times - he tried during the original recording and couldn't pull it off convincingly The only time he really pulled it off in the studio was the version we hear on the record - and that was the first of many takes he tried in a session totally separate from the original recording of the song. The other attempts are a texbook in sloppy playing. The problem was - he had a loose framework for the solo but didn't really know what he was going to play until the moment he played it. Totally flying by the seat of his pants. The fact that he actually managed to pull off such a brilliant example is testament to his playing - BUT.... if he'd planned the solo a bit more, thought about what he was going to do and practised around those ideas a little more rather than winging it - I think he wouldn't have struggled so much in the studio with it (you can hear his frustration with himself in the outtakes), and may have played such a blinder that people just wouldn't mention the word sloppy in the same sentence as that solo.
Don't get me wrong - Page is by far my favourite guitarist bar none. I just find myself frustrated that he came so far with his technique and kinda stopped, and even went backwards a bit.
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Playing the same piece over and over is not the kind of practice I meant, and that can get pretty boring. The sort of practice I meant is stuff to improve strength, accuracy and coordination.. For instance: whilst Jimmy is known for his blistering lead runs, his picking hand is actually pretty inaccurate a lot of the time, and later on got less synchronised with his fretting hand. It sound like he learned how to pick those lead runs pretty early on in his career, but once he'd learned the 'trick' he didn't feel the need to refine it or improve upon it. In fact he actually got worse at it - if you watch him doing that fast picking repeated run he does in the 'let that boy boogie' bit of WLL in TSRTS, he's actually picking the notes using his wrist. Watch him doing the same lick later in his career and he starts using a scrubbing motion which comes from the elbow, which can either mean he's got arthritic issues with his wrist, or more likely he doesn't practise that motion enough at speed, so when it comes to playing it in a live situation he's forced to do it from the elbow because he just hasn't trained his wrist to move that fast! He's similar to a lot of people who play instruments in that respect - they get to a certain level pretty easily, but then the jump to the next stage involves a lot more hard work than they anticipate so they get stuck at the stage they're at. It takes a lot of dedication, determination and single-mindedness to get through that, and if you've got there to find you're a world famous millionaire then there are many other distractions to stop you even wanting to try to get past that hurdle!
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Mostly when people say that they are referring to his live playing.
if you get a chance to hear some of the isolated guitar parts from the Led Zep II sessions, you might think differently!
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Well it is often said, that Jimmy Page is a 'sloppy' player.
What is really meant by this? Did he constantly fluff notes and mess up?
The more I listen (and I mean actually slow the stuff down and listen very carefully to parts) the more 'sloppy' begins to sound like the work of a rhythmic genius. Listening to later guitarists it all gets very clean and accurate but seems to lose some of the raw appeal to me.
I had a guitarist friend once say when I was learning the strumming parts in Stairway 'you are just spending hours learning Jimmy Page's mistakes' - I still don't think he was right about it. When I play it I see it as a festival or rhythmic variations which give the song that very page-esque signature - nothing like the youtube instruction videos where I guy says 'well do like this' or 'some people do it like that' - in reality every bar has it's own rhythmic alterations and changes. I found it worth the time to learn the transcriptions bar by bar and doing so added new dimensions to my playing in general.
So what do people think, was Jimmy actually sloppy or has some of the expression and ability to hold rhythmic ideas through a piece been somewhat lost by more technically perfect guitarists which followed? I'm thinking a lot for example of finger style blues, where nobody gives two hoots about the exact melody, just so long as that rhythmic pattern in the bass just keeps on rollin' and it stays (mostly) in key. It would die a total death and sound bland if attempted by a technical guitarist with no concept of holding onto that bass line at all cost.
Yup - he was/is a super sloppy player.
He often made mistakes and fluffed notes - the more so towards the end of Zep. It seems there were times that his picking hand, his fretting hand and his brain were all in different places at the same time.
But.
He gets away with it (generally), because for him the guitar is more about feel than technical ability. There are times you can hear he's playing beyond the limits of his technical ability, and sometimes it's awful and other times it strays into absolute genius.
From the beginning of Zeppelin up until the end of 1973 his playing did nothing but improve - the constant touring and constant playing did absolute wonders for fluidity and lyricism in his technique. After that the long lay-offs and the drugs & booze, and most importantly lack of practice didn't really do him any favours at all. He seems to have spent most of the latter years of Zeppelin relying on muscle memory and the many years of touring beforehand to carry his playing, and, yes he continued to have moments of genius, but the lack of proper practice translated into sloppines and lots more fluffs and mistakes and some out-and-out dreadful playing.
Technical ability isn't everything, but if you don't practice and don't play enough you get rusty. Complacency - the 'I know that so I don't have to practise it' attitude is death to progress as a musician.
You can see a similar curve in his playing throughout the Page/Plant project - at the beginning he was playing decently, but by 1998, after extensive touring his playing was finally almost back to his 1972/73 level. He's a great player, but as far as I can see he doesn't practice (enough) and this has held him back.
There's no doubt he was a great player - but I think he could've been so much better.
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They did have a brief go at it shortly after live aid to see if it could work..... but, if I recall rightly (somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure) Jimmy's neurotic tendencies caused tensions (he was apparently changing the battery in his wah pedal every 5 minutes....), and then Tony Thompson, who was sitting in Bonzo's place, had a serious motor accident so Plant called an end to the proceedings.I absolutely stand by Plant's constant efforts to stifle a reunion. No one has done more to build the Zep legacy than RP (as Peter Grant said, it's all about supply and demand, don't give them TOO much and leave them begging for more).
But when I watch Live Aid, and see how young they all were, Plant is just bouncing around, he looks like a kid. It seems like that year....maybe....could it have worked?
I also wonder if they had added a new drummer, and you had 3 clean members, might that new member have injected some "new blood" into the Zep canon and changed things up? Maybe force JP to clean up too?
It's all speculation of course. If JP was the driving intellect behind LZ, and we measure what he has put out since the breakup, then yes, it is a very good thing indeed that LZ did not reform after JB's death.
But if you LZ were to have reformed, they should have done it much sooner rather than later, IMHO.
Ah... found a link:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/flashback-led-zeppelin-reunite-badly-at-live-aid-20140311
If it had worked we'd never have had Now and Zen, Manic Nirvana or Fate of Nations, which would have been a shame in my opinion. You've only got to compare Outrider and Now and Zen to see that Plant was really trying to move forwards and stay fresh whereas Jimmy was just not being that progressive. I don't think any new Zep stuff from that time frame would have been anything other than tired sounding.
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How so? By the time Jason came of age, he still wasn't half the drummer his father was - that's no intended insult, Jason is tremendous, but his father was simply extraordinary - and enough time had passed since the initial disbanding of LZ that the creative momentum between the surviving members had long since dissipated in a haze of tragedy and substance abuse, that's not to say any reformed LZ album wouldn't have been good to even truly great, but the sheer weight of expectation on such a release would have worked against it from the outset, and it wouldn't have been given a fair shake once it hit shelves... it's only very recently that Pink Floyd's The Division Bell is getting a fair reappraisal, two decades after it's release, public opinion can take time to accept anything new.
And no Bonzo = no Zeppelin, all four members were utterly irreplaceable in their respective contributions. take one away from the equation and it stops being what it was... and besides, had Zeppelin reformed, say, in 1990-91 after the remastered catalogue re-releases, the whole thing would have been a corporate nightmare, the very thing Robert Plant complained privately about with the 02 show; lawyers and business managers would have dominated the proceedings, ticket prices would have been outrageous, the kids wouldn't have stood a chance getting tickets, audiences would been largely made up of people eager to be seen and not because they loved Zep, and the whole affair would have been an unparalleled commercial bonanza but a complete artistic disaster. Plant would have bitterly regretted it had he went through with it, and Zep's name and reputation would have been tarnished thereafter...
No, they made the right decision in 1980, they made the right decision throughout the 1980's and 1990's, and thank goodness Plant made the right decision after the honorable 02 show in 2007... we all dearly love LZ and their timeless music, but the star that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and Led Zeppelin burned so very brightly whilst they were active. I choose to remember them as they were - the single greatest band that ever walked or ever will walk the planet, bar none - not as I hope they would be again sometime in the future, that future won't happen and shouldn't happen... as Tom Wolfe once wrote, "you can never go home again".
^this.
Added to the fact that Jason had his own substance issues in the late 80's/early 90's, and Jimmy was still struggling with booze - and continued to right until the end of the Page & Plant collaboration - I don't think there was a 'right' time to put the wheels back on the truck that would have led to anything good.
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They absolutely made the right decision.
Personally, I think the decision to continue after the events of '77 was a bit iffy - at least without Jimmy and Bonzo facing and resolving their, er.. 'personal difficulties' first.
rain song tuning question
in Led Zeppelin Master Forum
Posted
Transposing from G to A is pretty easy for a keyboard player, so it was hardly a case of relearning the part - Jonesy is quite a talent musically, and he was constantly changing the way he played it anyway.
Only having to re-tune 2 strings is very helpful in a number of ways, and not just because of the amount of time it takes: less chance of strings breaking; more chance of the two necks being in tune with each other when you tuned them back (there were no handy pocket sized digital guitar tuners back then); if you were a roadie with Zep then you've got to consider the amount of partying that might have gone on too... if there's less to do, there's less to fuck up. If Page had two double neck guitars, I doubt it would've been an issue.
The transition from TSRTS (which ends on a Dm7 chord) to Rain Song (which starts on an A, live) from a musical point of view makes a great sounding plagal cadence (sometimes called the 'amen' cadence) which, from a western harmony point of view, has no feeling of 'finality' or 'ending' and prepares you to listen to more music. In the original tuning you end up with a perfect cadence (Dm7 - G), which implies 'the end' from a harmonic point of view. I think, from a point of view of one song running into the other, as they did them live, that having the Rain Song in A sounds much better than it would've done in G, especially with Robert singing that long C during the transition between the two songs - to the point it sounds a bit odd listening to the Rain Song on Houses of the Holy for me now.