More sentimental rummaging through the vinyl collection in my mind for Song of the Week #31.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boV0J0Dnu7o[/youtube]

Nice! Love this song. I've always wondered if Battle of Evermore could be played on the Stick. Or on anything, by anyone other than Page, that is...

Beautifull i keep being amazed that you're able to put out a song every week !


Cheers,
Bas

Gene,
with your incredible arrangement....
"Seems that the wrath of the gods got a punch on the nose and it started to flow"

Very nice use of the effects in and out especially the rotary speaker effect to lead into the melodies, and a bodacious distortion which beautifully highlights the lead with the bend and the pentatonics with a raised 4th (flat 5th) passing tone. Your left hand motors were flawless setting up a travis style fingerpicked background.

There is a lot which can be gleamed from the technique you use in this song arrangment. From alternating fingers to play a single note repeatedly, interplay between the melody and bass side, and your choice of playing placement between two areas on the touchboard depending on the note pitch and chord arpeggios you wanted to include. Whether it was intuitive or worked out in advance ( like Jimmy Page's solos ) it shows a mature advanced level of musicianship which just puts the song over the Misty Mountain Top!

Gene, I hope you didn't spend your days with a woman unkind- who smoked your stuff and drank all your wine to inspire this song, but I know you have your wife whom you love very much and in California- coincidence.... I think not!

Great Performance and Arrangement. another one of many "Gene's Gems"
thanks for the post!
Dave Brosky

Makes you look ten years younger .

I enjoyed the right-hand attack and dynamic differentiation. Were there some non-intentional "mental pauses"? It seemed so after about 2:30. Nice layering over LH chord structure.

Hurray for Zeppelin! And for kind comments, thanks friends!

@enrique Battle of Evermore is a fatty! Not quite sure how one could approach that, with multiple voices and layered acoustic instrumentation. I checked the wiki on that tune as your post got me to thinking about it - did you know JPJ would sing Sandy Denny's part live? AND that John Bonham would sometimes sing it. Wow.

Yeah, BasV, thanks man. I try to queue up some songs in advance so I have a selection to choose from. Being in a state of constantly learning new songs will drive your ability, your technique and fretboard knowledge. The most interesting part is that, you never quite know what technique you will be developing. It has taken me a while to put it into words, but the gist of it is this - you let the song dictate the technique, and then roll with that. From a technique perspective, the most challenging passage in Going to California was the lead into the verse - I had to learn to lead with all three different fingers for that opening passage. Arranging for vocalists like Robert Plant can be challenging too, although he is pretty subdued in the first and third verses so that wasn't too difficult in this case.

The long and the short of it is that anyone can do a Song a week. Finding the right song and arrangement is the challenge.

@JRJ, Jeans and t-shirt definitely subtracts a couple of years from the camera! Noted...

@Dave - thanks man! As always, your video reviews offer some great insight into the performance! The bends in the last chorus are (Dmi7 in right hand) bending E up to F and then hammering on A and then another full step bending riff (Dm7 in left hand) bending G up to A and then hammering C above. Page has lots of fun G - B bending techniques, this was just an attempt to capture that spirit.

I am complimenting the right hand sound with a compressor pedal, a tremolo pedal as well and s Leslie pedal that has a pretty decent ramp time from slow to fast. The latter also features a nice overdrive, which gives it grit, not fuzz. So unaccompanied, the section can have meaning / emphasis without losing it acoustic sensibility.

As for non-intentional pauses Sagehalo, well, that one was just one of many! All part of the show I guess. If I can't nail the track in three takes, I move on to another song (Jesu excluded). Part of the learning process, for me anyway, is making mistakes so you can know where your strength and weaknesses lie.

Thanks again all for positive comments and feedback, I always look forward to the commentary.

-Gene

hey Gene that was wonderful! luv the Zeps.

k

Sorry, as a pro I tend to hold you to a higher standard.