This song is in the key of Am and features an acoustic guitar that focuses on arpeggiating chords. It also features a constant moving bassline that gives life to the guitar riff. Finally, it is important to mention that Jimmy Page uses a fingerstyle picking technique for this song while coming back to a guitar pick on the hard rock sections.
black dog guitar tabs
Going to California is in the key of D major and plays around with some harmonic modulation. The tuning Jimmy Page uses on his acoustic guitar is known as Double Drop-D Tuning. It goes as follows: D-A-D-G-B-D. Essentially, the top and bottom E strings on standard tuning are tuned down a whole step to D. The tablature for this one is a mix of the acoustic guitars and the mandolin heard on the song.
The first thing to notice with this song is the tuning of the guitar. Page recorded this song on the classic Gibson model, the SJ-200, using what is called the DADGAD tuning. You can also hear the instrument named tabla, used to enhance the Indian vibe in the song.
This one is a quite challenging song in the key of D Dorian. There are several live versions of Jimmy Page performing this song on its own, or in a mashup with a former song he had written in DADGAD, White Summer. These live performances are also a great tool to find some other licks he uses on the acoustic guitar.
The Battle of Evermore is track number 3 on their fourth album (which is untitled but commonly referred to as Led Zeppelin IV). It is a folk duet sung by Robert Plant and English singer-songwriter Sandy Deany. This song features an acoustic guitar and mandolin.
The Battle of Evermore is in the key of Am and features open chords throughout the song. The one interesting thing harmonically is a descending bass line found on the guitar that goes Am/E to Am/D# to Am/D, which creates an interesting movement.
The Rain Song uses a 12-string acoustic guitar, which has an alternate tuning. Their studio version is played with the following tuning (low to high): D-G-C-G-C-D. Their live versions have the same tuning up a whole step: E-A-D-A-D-E.
On this song, we can hear Jimmy Page actually play two guitar parts, one on a six-string acoustic and the other one on a 12-string acoustic guitar. It is through mixing that they were blended to make it sound like one part.
The instrumentation in this song is very sparse to help the vocals and acoustic guitar shine through. The guitar part was recorded with a 12-string acoustic guitar, as well as some mandolin and steel guitar fills.
John Paul Jones wrote the riff for this song, which is inspired by blues legend Muddy Waters and is built around a call and response dynamic between Robert Plant and the band. Jimmy Page used a Gibson Les Paul to record all of the guitars and its overdubs.
Good Times Bad Times is in the key of E and relies on the Mixolydian scale to give it a bluesy vibe. For his solo, Jimmy Page passed his guitar through a Leslie Speaker and created a swirling effect. At the time, this was very cutting-edge, and he was praised for his creative approach.
This song is in the key of E and, as with Good Times Bad Times uses the Mixolydian scale to give it a blues-rock vibe. This song features a fast downstroke riff that indirectly gave birth to punk music in terms of guitaristic style.
I have been playing guitar since 2004. As long as I can remember I always had a huge passion for rock music and I extremely enjoy playing it. Helping people on their rock journey is what drives me to keep on playing.ReadMore About Me
As one of the biggest and most iconic guitar manufacturers, Gibson still makes amazing guitars, also remastering its old iconic models for a better experience. These two models are the most purchased...
Clapton's Blackie, BB King's Lucille, Neil Young's Old Black - sometimes a guitar is more than a guitar, it's a part of a guitarist's personality and thus it earns a memorable, even iconic nickname. Such is the case with a certain Frankenstein Ibanez guitar that then-rising star Joe Satriani received in 1987, one which would become a workhorse instrument for him through the years and a testing ground for his highly successful line of signature Ibanez models.
It's the guitar we now know as the Black Dog, that diminutive six-string, recognizable not only for the quirky scribblings that its owner would enthusiastically apply but for its unique tone, by turns fat and crunchy, sweet and soaring. From the latter part of the '80s and well into the '90s, even as he perfected the art of guitar design and engineering with the Ibanez JS series, Satch used the Black Dog for all it was worth.
"There was just something special about the Black Dog," Satriani says. "I remember [producer/engineer] John Cuniberti said it right. We were going to record something, and he said to me, 'That guitar sounds more musical than other guitars you have.' It was a very untechnical assessment, but it was the description that made the most sense. Anytime I played the Black Dog guitar, it sounded like music and less like the combination of pickups and wood."
In 2008, Ibanez commemorated the original Black Dog guitar with the JSBDG Joe Satriani Black Dog Tribute model, a stunning limited-edition run that re-created every nuance of the axe that Satch played on some of his most famous albums and on stages across the world.
"My getting the guitar that became the Black Dog would have been in 1987. It came by way of Rich Lasner, who was then head of Artist Relations at Ibanez. When I was introduced to Ibanez through Steve Vai, Rich was the interface guy. Being a really great guitar player himself, Rich was a lot of fun to work with. We spoke the same language and zoned in on the technical aspects of the instrument, right down to the minute details.
"The guitar originally came with a hum/sing/hum arrangement, but when it arrived at my place, Rich or somebody under Rich's direction had filled in the middle single-coil space with wood and refinished it in black. I think there were some new frets on the neck, too. I believe the neck was a Roadstar neck. So it was a 540 Radius body, hum/sing/hum arrangement with the middle pickup gone, hole filled in with wood, finished over, with a Roadstar neck. That's how we started."
"Well, here's what happened: I had just finished Surfing With The Alien. This was back when we passed around cassettes and vinyl months before an album came out. The record had gotten some interest in the manufacturing community - strings, picks, guitars, stuff like that. Cliff Cultreri and Relativity Records were trying to get people to properly pronounce my name and to put a face to my music. Simultaneously, Steve Vai had sent me an Ibanez guitar because he was getting ready to do something with them, and he wanted my opinion on the workmanship.
"I said, 'Hey, this guitar is great!' I loved the bridge. Up till then, my only other Floyd Rose-bridge guitar was a Kramer Pacer, which I had used on my first three records, the EP, Not Of This Earth and Surfing With The Alien. That guitar was just a wreck. It was always falling apart, I had changed just about everything I could on it - the whole bit. But the Ibanez guitars came out, and I thought, Hey, somebody is finally doing it right.
"Steve said, 'Well, I'll talk to them and tell them who you are, and maybe they'll want to talk to you.' At the same time, Cliff had played them the record, and they said, 'Wow! Maybe we should make you something.' So by the time Surfing With The Alien had come out in October 1987, I had already received the guitar, and we were sending it back and forth and playing around with things. We were changing the profile of the neck and working on what became the compound radius formula for the JS line. And that was Black Dog. That thing had so many changes made to it."
"See, prior to '88, I had never really had an instrumental guitar gig; I never thought I would. Most of my guitars were set up to accompany singers. I think I had a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck JB pickup in the Kramer, but sometimes I had a DiMarzio Super Distortion in it. Or maybe it was their classic PAF, and then maybe there'd be a Duncan Custom Custom. Like most guitar players, I was just trying to figure out the best formula.
"I wanted something that was unique, something that would go with this guitar, because the JS, which was born from the 540 Radius, was what you would call a 'smaller-bodied guitar.' It was not a Les Paul. That early Jeff Beck sound seemed to go really well with a Les Paul. Sometimes with Les Pauls, though, you're fighting too much size, and having that little bump in the midrange really helped him poke through and get this kind of vocal quality."
Do you remember the moment when you were playing the Black Dog, whether it was at home or on stage, and it felt really right to you? When did you say to yourself, "I can do something with this guitar"?
"Actually, a very important part of this story is [guitar repair expert] Gary Brawer. I had been bringing my guitars to him for a long time, complaining and telling him, 'I need to be able to hit the strings hard, play classic blues licks, but I also need to be able to play these light-fingered legato things - and I need to do this two-handed tapping stuff.' If we set the action up high where the blues stuff sounded really good, then the tapping was unbalanced, so we had to lower that. But if it got too low, then the traditional guitar stuff didn't sound big enough.
"There's no way around some of that stuff. I think when you're making records, you have different guitars set up for different jobs. What Gary helped worked out was the question: 'How can we adjust the action so that it's the same from the first couple of frets all the way down the neck to the 17th, 19th frets?' We took a lot of knowledge and technology from those sessions, and then we brought it all to Rich at Ibanez to work on a neck that would allow us to do that.
"It never really clicked until Surfing was out, and I got a real chance to woodshed with that guitar. The first thing I recorded with it, I think, was The Crush Of Love. I did that and a version of Power Cosmic for a Guitar Player flexi-disc. We recorded that right around late '87. The album started taking off, and I had this new Black Dog prototype in my hands, and I started to tour with it." 2ff7e9595c
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