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Stairway to Heaven


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Never thought I'd do this song, but it's been called out and in context of the gig and the placement in the set, I think it will actually go over pretty well. Never played it before. Guitar player texted me to learn it last night for practice tonight. I only got to spend about 45 min on it and was rough in practice, but I'll have it ready for the gig Thursday.

 

A couple things: First, the Mellotron Flutes and Wurly EP in the Kronos absolutely nail the sound. Second, this is a little trickier than I had imagined. Once I started paying attention, I never even noticed the LH flute part that starts immediately with the first guitar lick and plays throughout until the EP comes in. Also having to work harder than I thought to work out some of the voicings. Some of what I thought were just 3rds move around quite a bit and the LH throws me off even more. I'll get it, but if anybody has actually gone through the trouble of notating this and would like to post, it would save me some time. If not, I don't have notation software but maybe I'll go ahead and post a video or something after I get it all nailed down.

 

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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I think it's cool that you are using a Wurlitzer EP for this. JPJ used a Hohner Electra Piano in the studio and a Rhodes EP live. I have always used a Rhodes. Going to have to try out a Wurlie now. :)
:nopity:
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LOL, I was going to share which patch I was using.....and it turns out it actually IS Rhodes....sorry. F. McComb Mark I EP. It has some growl to it so I just thought it was a Wurly. Just a preset but it sounds nice. Flute patch is called something like "tape flutes" which is obviously Mellotron and sounds perfect.

 

 

Perfect example of voicing by the way....instead of in one example, playing D in the LH and F#-A in the RH, it's F# in the LH, an D-A in the RH. And all throughout it switches which hand plays the fundamental. Which means the RH goes back and for between 3rds and all kinds of other intervals, and LH is kind of all over the place and usually not expected based on the Root of what's going on. I thought this was going to be really super simple. And it's not that it's all that difficult, it's just tricking my ear - which is unusual for me. Usually I immediately pick things out. But with this I think I got it and then I listed closer and realize I got the voicing wrong.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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For years, I would've fought against covering the tune... too cliched, too much baggage. But I haven't thought about it for awhile, and it seems to me we've passed into a new era/generation, where we are far enough removed from the original cultural significance of Stairway to just enjoy the song for the great composition it is. I mean -- it has been 27 years since Wayne's World!

 

http://briff.me/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/waynes-world-no-stairway.jpg

 

 

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I played this tune exactly once onstage. There was a local Led Zeppelin tribute band called Stairway Denied, their schtick was that they played virtually everything from the Zep catalog except Stairway. They were also a great band, for about 10 years, they were the biggest draw in the area, and they deserved it, they really nailed the tunes, and had an excellent vocalist. They had kind of broken up, but wanted to pull of one more show, and do Stairway as the encore, to let the fans know that they really were done. They contacted me about playing keys on the tunes that called for it, their bass player had kind of moved on from playing keys, and had never really felt like he did the JPJ parts justice anyway. I had a blast learning the tune, along with Kashmir, Thank You, Fool in the Rain, and others.

 

I have a chart around here somewhere that seemed to get the voicing right to my ears, I'll post it if I can find it.

Turn up the speaker

Hop, flop, squawk

It's a keeper

-Captain Beefheart, Ice Cream for Crow

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A couple years ago there was a local female fronted cover band that did several classic rock epics. They did Stairway well and the crowd loved it. Not cliche at all, it's so rare to be heard.

 

I worked out all the recorder parts - 2 soprano and one tenor. If you think about each as an individual melody, it may help you to pick each line out. Occasionally there will be 4 parts. This is what I hear in the recorders:

 

Tenor (mostly half notes)

(famous guitar intro 1x), last line of intro GA A (2nd round of intro) A Ab G Gb F A.... C D F A(lo) BC B D.... C D F GA(hi)... C D EF F

A Ab G Gb F.. GA A.. A Ab G Gb F A... C D D CBC DE D GA A(lo)... C D F A(lo)... BC D EF F

A Ab G Gb F.. GA A.. A Ab G Gb F GA A...

 

Someone will probably come along with a better transcription. Let me know if you need the other recorder parts, otherwise I'll just leave you with this:

 

 

 

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Damn, I sort of regret selling this old book published by Hal Leonard IIRC that had all the parts to quite a number of Led Zep tunes (drums, bass, keys, guitar, vox).

 

To my sixteen-year-old self, it seemed pretty accurate. I was transcribing piano off records by then, so I wasn't a complete idiot, just a young idiot.

 

If time weren't a factor, I'd suggest grabbing it from Interlibrary Loan (ILL) off your local library.

 

To me it's hard to differentiate all the notes from the Mellotron, but then again, I haven't tried like some of the above posters, and am not likely to.

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Sorry, difficult to make out the intended voicings of the annotation on the forum - that's one thing that would be awesome that I'm sure no forum software has, is some sort of easy way to do notation without having to use external software and post an image.

 

That said, I feel like I pretty much got it - at least close enough that the average person and probably most musicians wouldn't notice any differences. The part I keep finding where I've made mistakes and corrected myself is if a note in the chord resides in the RH or LH. I think I'm getting it sorted out. I mean, I can pick out an F chord, for example, but is it C in the LH and F A in the RH, or F in the LH and C A in the RH? That's a simple example, there's a lot more going on. The advice to treat each like their own melody was great advice and essentially how I ended up picking out the parts. It just meant that I had to almost learn it twice and then put the two parts together. Again, like I had said, deceivingly difficult.

 

All that said, I feel pretty good about it, and in general this will be a fun gig. Since we migrated a bit to a discussion about whether or not to play, and appropriate gigs, I'll share a bit more info....

 

This gig is at Lake of the Ozarks. For those of you not familiar, the show "Ozark" is nothing like it. It was shot in Atlanta, in fact. On a weekend like this, it will be SLAMMED and the waves in the lake may as well be the ocean. Here is a pic from the gig I played with this band at the same location last year:

 

http://www.ohbrotherstl.com/Pics/HToads.jpg

 

That said, it IS still the middle of MO and the rich guys with all of the huge boats are all in their 40s and 50s, so classic rock goes over great!

 

Here's the set list:

 

Set 1

 

Smokin (Boston)

Sweet Emotion

Livin on a Prayer

Last Chile

Detroit Rock City

Don't Stop Believin

Uptown Funk

Who Can it Be Now (I'm playing sax....real one, not keys)

Walk this Way

Roll with the Changes

Rocky Mountain Way

Pour Some Sugar

Foreplay/Longtime

 

Set 2

 

Turn Me Loose (yeah, I got the intro)

Tush

Double Vision

Alright Now

Never Been Any Reason

Sweet Home Alabama

Anyway You Want It

Feels Like the First Time

You Shook Me

Everybody (backstreet boys...the only song with a sequence all night)

Brick House (gonna do a sax solo on this one as well)

Sister Christian

Immigrant Song

 

Set 3

 

Stranglehold

Black & Blue (Sammy haggar)

Rock of Ages

Do You Feel Like I do

Jessies girl or Purple Rain (audible into....)

Highway to Hell

Jane (starship)

Separate Ways

Tell Me What You Want (Zebra)

Renegade

 

Encore

 

Stairway to Heaven

Rebel Yell

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Your set list reads like my life chronology, absent of course my roaring big hair glam rock 80s era (which for some reason remains my favorite - i think because of the age/maturity that i hit that era).

 

Ozark is a cool show, dont spoil it for us with reality lol. Its like watching Animal Kingdom and how they can just pull up and park on the boardwalk in Oceanside and theres no cars or congestion (San Diego north county resident here) any time they feel like it. Yeah - there is no parking on the boardwalk and there is always a complete clusterf**k of traffic at the beach and zero parking without circling like a vulture. And they talk about going way out to San Marcos to see Smurf when in actuality, SM is right next to O-Side, 5 miles away

The baiting I do is purely for entertainment value. Please feel free to ignore it.
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What venue is that?

 

At least you are not out on the lake playing a dance cruise on a party boat (like I did summers in my youth!)

 

H. Toads at Camden on the Lake. It's a Thursday, Friday, Saturday gig.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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H. Toads at Camden on the Lake. It's a Thursday, Friday, Saturday gig.

 

Honestly, how can we recognize you with a shirt on? :P

 

And of course the guitarist needs several 4x12 cabinets -- "to get that sound"

It's not the gear, it's the player ... but hey, look -- new gear!

 

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H. Toads at Camden on the Lake. It's a Thursday, Friday, Saturday gig.

 

Honestly, how can we recognize you with a shirt on? :P

 

And of course the guitarist needs several 4x12 cabinets -- "to get that sound"

 

Believe it or not, he does, lol. He has different amps running through different cabs for different sounds. My first time this weekend running IEMs with this band. There are 3 guitar channels in the mix and I can definitely hear the differences and mix them accordingly. Plus this definitely a very guitar oriented band even though there is some great keyboard stuff. So yeah, some of it is show. Especially when you have a crew setting it up and tearing it down for you....why not? He just brings his guitars.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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For years, I would've fought against covering the tune... too cliched, too much baggage. But I haven't thought about it for awhile, and it seems to me we've passed into a new era/generation, where we are far enough removed from the original cultural significance of Stairway to just enjoy the song for the great composition it is. I mean -- it has been 27 years since Wayne's World!

 

http://briff.me/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/waynes-world-no-stairway.jpg

 

 

At least two of the folks on this forum, including yours truly, regularly play jobs with the guy who played the employee in that scene.

Now out! "Mind the Gap," a 24-song album of new material.
www.joshweinstein.com

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Dan - respect with Foreplay/Longtime!

 

Thanks! Yeah that one can be a bit of a challenge.

 

The sound guy's fiancé shot some video Friday night and it's on face book HERE. Not sure if it's public or not, so maybe you won't be able to see it. Wish she would have shot Saturday night instead because I screwed up a little Friday night. They switched Sister Christian and Stairway, and I didn't know. I started playing Sister Christian and they turn and say "No! Stairway", so I had to scramble to find my patch and started out a bit razzled. On top of that, I had trouble hearing the acoustic in my ears. Saturday night, I checked with them and confirmed the setlist change, turned up the acoustic in my IEM's, and what more focused when the song came up.

 

Side note, they picked up a flute at a pawn shop and the bass player stepped up to the mic to fake the part.....which is funny since you can't play 3 notes on one flute, but nobody seemed to know that. People that know the band, even girlfriends of band members, were asking him how long he's played the flute. LOL. He just looked at me and smiled and said "the ruse continues", lol. Although, I gotta hand it to him, by the end of the weekend he was actually playing along with me on the flute. Guy's really talented and figured it out in a couple days on a pawn shop flute.

 

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Sadly, the FB video is protected. I do not have the cojónes to attempt the Foreplay solo live. (Please, no TWSS anyone). Did you do the talkbox intro to Sweet Emotion? I've tried, and failed hard at that.

 

The guitar player has a talkbox. He uses it on that, Livin on a Prayer, and Do you Feel

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Well, playing this song with the band just took on some new significance.

 

I just learned that the guitar player and band leader passed away today. Very sad news. So only weekend we played the song will be the last time as well.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Thanks Joe - I know you've seen some of the stuff on FB and I don't know if his page is viewable to you but seeing all of the outpouring from the local community is a real testament to how many lives he touched in such a positive way. Such a great guy! A real loss for all of us.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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