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Stairway to Heaven

by Led Zeppelin • Lesson #69 • May 18, 2017

Editor’s Notes

In this lesson, I’ll teach you how to play the first part of the intro riff to Stairway to Heaven. I’ll show you tabs, but also give a tutorial on the chord positions needed, finger picking patterns, how to practice the difficult parts, given an introduction to barre chords, and everything else you’ll need to play the the opening bars of this classic Led Zeppelin song.

Note! As of now, I have not made a full lesson for this entire song. What’s below is what I have. I may make more lessons for it at some point, but that’ll be for some day in the future. If you’d really like me to make more lessons teaching it, feel free to email me to let me know.

Intro Video Lesson

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 Playthrough
  • 0:26 Lesson overview
  • 1:46 1st chord (barring basics)
  • 3:50 2nd & 3rd chords (walking bass notes)
  • 5:30 4th chord (big jump to D/F#)
  • 7:25 Final 3 chords & turnaround
  • 9:21 Add the fingerpicking
  • 10:42 Closing thoughts

Interlude Video Lesson

This second lesson teaches you the “Oh, it makes me wonder” part heard between 2:14-2:38 of the song.

This second video explores some more of the acoustic nooks & crannies of Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. In this video I’m going to break down the interlude section heard between 2:14 and 2:38 of the official recording (which has the vocal “Oh, it makes me wonder”). I’ll teach you how to play this section on guitar: playing the chord shapes, approaching strumming, and how to get over the hump with the triads & difficult transitions.

Practice Notes 4 pages

It includes all of my notes for this lesson, allowing you to follow along at your own pace. You're free to download, print, and share the PDF across your devices.

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