Stairway To Heaven - Led Zeppelin - Guitar Lesson

What’s up everyone? This is Mike Deiure from rockguitarpower.com and in this video, we are going to learn how to play “Stairway to Heaven”. Okay, so here we are. You’re going to learn the intro to “Stairway to Heaven”. So before we learn to play all the notes separated in individual the way it is on the recording, we’re just going to first look at the basic chord shapes. So we have A minor and then we have E/G#, which is basically an E chord with a G# in the root. And then we have a C/G, and then we have D with an F# in the base. And then an FM7, which is just like an F chord without the bar down here. And then we’re going to go G, A minor but basically, we’re just going to hit the G on the big string and then to A minor. Now if you noticed here in my picking hand, for this I’m going to use my pick on the big string and then my middle finger and my ring finger are going to pluck the G and B string. And the same thing for the A minor chord except I only hit the open A on that one. Now, it’s just a matter of picking the chord in the right pattern. So right there on the second chord when I start it, I’m going to use my pick to play the D string and then my middle finger is going to pluck the E string. And then I use the pick the rest of the time. So I’m going to use this type of technique throughout this intro. [Demonstration] Same thing there again, pick on the D string and the middle finger is going to pluck the E string. [Demonstration] Okay, cool! So you could see that I have like a hybrid motion between using the pick and the fingers and I’m able to play all the parts the way they should sound. Okay, so now we are at the solo rhythm to “Stairway to Heaven” which will take us all the way to the end of the song. So we got a pretty basic chord progression with one variation that we’re going to learn here. So we’re going to start out. We got an A minor chord and we’re going to play all these bar chords. So A minor, G major and F major. Alright, so that’s the basic chord progression. The variation at the end is just going to go back to G very briefly, but let’s look at the first part. So there is kind of two solos and there is the little breakdown in the middle. So during this first solo, we’re going to get a basic rhythm that’s going to be very legato, all the parts are going to kind of blend well together. So here’s what I’m going to use. [Demonstration] Then what happens is it comes into the breakdown where you really hear the rhythm kick in. So what we’re going to do now is take a look at this because it’s a little bit trickier. So the rhythm is the same for the A minor and the G. Basically, we’re going to play two quarter notes and then we’re going to do four eighth notes that are muted. So the rhythm on A minor and again, I’m using my pump muting on the left hand. I have the shape of the chord down but I’m not pushing down. I’m just slightly touching so that I’d get it to mute. Now I go to G major and do the exact same rhythm, okay? So together [Demonstration]. Alright, cool! Now, the last one is on F. This one is a little tricky and I’m going to simplify this for a second to make it easier. So what we’re going to do is actually use triplets, which is just three notes in one beat and it’s going to sound like triplet. [Demonstration] Okay, so here’s how we’re going to do this rhythm. Basically, what we’re going to do is play the first beat of each triplet and there’s going to be four of them. So the first beat sounds out, the other two are muted. So this rhythm all happens in my left hand by pumping. The tricky part is that the strumming needs to stay steady down and up. So when I start it, I go down-up-down then up-down-up. So it’s a little disorienting because you’re always going to want to make that first hit start with the down stroke but it’s going to alternate. So I go down-up-down-up-down-up-down-up. And again, the rhythm is all in my left hand by pumping the rhythm. My right hand, if I just start out like this, it can stay steady. And then my left hand, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, okay? Another analogy you could use is think of a way a train sounds starting up and going faster. [Demonstration] Okay? So you want to see if you can get that rhythm going nice and steady. Once you have that, what we’re going to do is just hit the G chord once and the way back up to the A minor again. So the tricky part is doing one rhythm and then going into the different rhythm with the triplets. But if you practice each part separately, it should get pretty easy. So here’s how the whole sequence sounds. [Demonstration] Okay, good! So that’s the last rhythm there. That will take you pretty much to the end of the song. You could go back to this.