Introduction
In this video lesson your instructor, Mike Walker teaches how to play the song Stairway to Heaven as part of our guitar series on English songs. It is one of the most iconic piece of rock music. Playing it on your guitar instantly earns you street cred as a guitarist.
Don't forget to make use of the chords and tabs provided with the song lesson!
Strumming Pattern
The intro and the verse section of the song are all about fingerpicking, but as the song moves towards the more guitar-centric section strumming does come into play, and the strumming pattern is as follows: D - D U - U D U
- D = Down strum
- U = Up strum
- - = Pause or hold
Song Structure
- Introduction: Mike Walker will introduce this song lesson. He will be your guitar instructor for this lesson. He will teach you how to tune your guitar and share his advice on why every rock fan should learn this song.
- Intro Piece: This is the part when you play instantly makes everyone acknowledge that you are playing Stairway to Heaven.
- Section A and B: Section A is pretty similar to the intro piece, Mike tells you which chords to play to make it sound different and how to play Section B.
- Section C and D: This part of the guitar lesson continues with the acoustic guitar chord.
- Section E and F: Here, you will learn the most repeated guitar part of the song, section E. The F section is about the last acoustic part of the song.
- Song Demo: In this part, Mike will show you how to play the entire acoustic guitar section alongside the backing track.
- Solo Lesson: This is the most anticipated part of the song; Mike breaks Jimmy Page’s iconic solo with multiple licks and plays them with the backing track.
- Overdubs: This is the last section of the guitar lesson, and here, you will learn about overdubs, which are basically the additional layer of guitar tracks used in the song.
