Guitar Control presents instructor Darrin Goodman with his third installment of fun and easy Led Zeppelin riffs. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with the step by step video instruction and you will be rockin’ these classic riffs tonight!
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I’ve got another batch of cool fun riffs from Led Zeppelin.
Right now there’s a link in the description you can click on where you can download this really useful and pretty cool chord chart from Guitar Control for free. It’s in pdf format and you can print it out and it has every chord that you could ever need for whatever it is that you’re trying to play all in one convenient sheet so you can just you know print out put it wherever you practice and it’s a really good tool.
So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these.
Led Zeppelin Riff-1 Moby Dick
All right so the first one we’re looking at is Moby Dick and for this one we’re going to be in drop D tuning; so basically I’ve just got the low E string tuned down to a D and everything else is the same, so D, A, D, G, B and E. So this is kind of a baseline type of riff. So starting off the first thing we want to do is put our first finger on the third fret of the A string and our third finger on the fifth fret of the A string and we’re going to play the open low E string for the downbeat of one and then we’re going to go to the A string, we’re already getting that fifth fret for the and of one, so it’s like one and, and then for beat two it’s 16th notes. So we’re gonna go five, three, and then down to the low E, five, three… Now when we hit that three there that’s the last sixteenth note of beat two and then it’s tied to the downbeat of beat three so it just rings out twice as long as the previous notes had… So we let that ring out then we go back to five and that’s a 16th note and then back to three is an eighth note, then we go back to the fifth fret and this is the downbeat of four and that’s the first measure and then that riff repeats quite a bit… All right then on the second measure we start off with our third finger on the fifth fret of the low E string and that’s on the downbeat of one and then the and of one we’re going to skip over the A string and come up to the fifth fret of the D string down to the third fret… Then we’re gonna shift our whole hand position down again and now we’re on the A string; three, one, three, one, three, one, so it’s the same timing as we were doing with the first measure and then that’s repeated twice and then it goes back to the first riff again for two more times. So it’s sort of set up like how like a you know a 12 bar – one, four, five would be set up similar as far we have four bars of the one chord, two bars of the four chord, two bars of the one chord and then we’re going to go to a five chord and back down to four chord and then the whole thing would repeat. So the first two measures… third measure… Now starting on the fourth measure we’re gonna come up to the seventh fret on the low E string on the downbeat of one and then on the and of one we’re gonna come to the seventh fret on the D string, beat two is sixteenth notes again, so we have seven, five, and then seven on the A string, back to the seven on the D string… then on the downbeat of three we rest; so it’s like the first 16th note of beat 3 we rest and then the second 16th note is 7 on the D string again, 7 on the A string and then back to the D string Five, seven and open and then to the fifth fret again on the D string. So for that last measure we’re going to shift our hand position down again so now our third finger is going to be playing the fifth fret of the D string and the first beat is just 16th notes… and then on beat 2 we have 2 e and, so we’re going to go from that one e and, and then we’re going to go to the third fret of the G string with our third finger, and it’s a full step bend, back to five, to the second fret of the G string, to the fifth fret of the D string and then finally the third fret of the D string… and then it would just repeat…
Led Zeppelin Riff-2 Good Times, Bad Times
All right so the next one to look at is the riff from Good Times, Bad Times. So this one here we’re starting off we’ve got a E5 power chord; so the low E string is open, seventh fret of the A string with my first finger and then the ninth fret of the D and G string with my third finger or you could use your third on the D string and your fourth finger on the G string, whatever is more comfortable for you, and we’re going to hit that on the downbeat of one is two eighth notes so it’s like one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four and then the next measure do the same thing, but we slide out of it this time. So that’s like the first part of it… Okay we slide out of that then we’re going to come down here and we’re going to do that same shape we were doing for E5, but we’re going to do it with first finger the fifth fret and third fingers on the seventh and this is D5 and now we’re going to arpeggiate this. So we’re going to start we’re going to play A, D, G, D, G, D… Then we have to reach over to the fourth fret of the D string with your first finger; four, seven and then on the A string four, five, six and then it would just start over again…
Led Zeppelin Riff-3 How Many More Times
All right then the last one to look at is How Many More Times and this one’s got actually kind of a similar groove to Moby Dick. So we’re gonna start off with the open low E string and this is on this is a quarter note so this is one and then for beat two we have a dotted eighth note tied to a 16th note, so this is kind of kind of weird… So these two are quick and it’s like one two e, three, four… Then we go to the seventh fret of the A string with your third finger and back to the fifth fret of the A string with your first finger… then the second measure open E string to the A string; seven, five, seven, five… It does that riff for a very long time, they’re singing over that, so it’s just the notes are all easy, it’s just the timing on it that’s kind of weird and then after it does that a whole bunch of times then we just go to a D major chord. So my first finger is picking up the fifth fret of the A string and my third finger is picking up the seventh fret of the D, G and B string and it’s a 16th note tied to a dotted eighth note, so that’s beat one. And then for beat two it’s a quarter note, so it’s like three strums, and then we have A, so we stay on these same frets, we’re just going to move our first finger so now we’re barring across all the strings on the fifth fret and second finger is on the sixth fret of the G string, the third finger is on the seventh fret of the A string and fourth fingers on the seventh fret of the D string, same strum and looks like this…
Conclusion
All right so there you have it, three more not too terribly tough to play Led Zeppelin riffs. Good Times, Bad Times might be a little bit challenging if you’re a beginner, but other than that most of it’s pretty simple and pretty easy to play. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
