Black Dog by Led Zeppelin | rhythm
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An electric guitar lesson on how to play "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin on guitar from their 1971 album Led Zeppelin Four.
This lesson is for the rhythm guitar parts only. From Wikipedia: "Black Dog" is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin, the opening track on their fourth album (1971). It was released as a single in the US and in Australia with "Misty Mountain Hop" as the B-side, reaching number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 10 in Australia. In 2004, the song was first ranked #294 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time before being ranked at #300 in 2010." Most of this song is not too tough to play but for me it's always been the turn around section that's screwed me up. I've struggled with the timing on this for years. I've played in bands that would have loved to do this tune, but we couldn't handle that part so wound up dropping the song. I talk about that quite a bit in the lesson and break it down in a way that I hope will make it easier to understand.
If you can nail that part the rest of it is a piece of cake. Here's a quote from John Paul Jones about the turnaround section: "I then came up with the bridge riff, which is in E. This riff is rather tricky-sounding, as it's built from a repeated phrase that is four-and-a-half beats long. Each time the phrase is repeated it's displaced by half a beat. Notice how the E note, which falls neatly on beat one the first time the phrase is played, falls on the second eighth-note of beat one the second time around, on beat two the third time, and on the second eighth-note of beat two the fourth time. This technique of repeating an odd-length phrase in an even time signature such as 4/4 is known as hemiola and is a very effective compositional tool." Wow! Who knew! I've never heard of a hemiola before I read this. Pretty cool. I hope you enjoy the lesson and good luck learning the tune. Cheers Andy |
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