Jimmy Page Style Licks

by Christopher Sung Ahhhhh. Jimmy Page. Guitarist for the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, the Firm, and studio guitarist for just about every top 10 hit that came out of London in the mid-60's, Jimmy's style is a mixture of rock and blues. What I find so compelling about Jimmy's playing is his great use of different rhythmic patterns along with more traditional blues playing. In this lesson, we'll take a look at some of the devices he uses for soloing, and some ideas he uses for playing blues.

In the example below, the main melody line for the first 3 measures is the notes played on beats 1 and 3. For the beats in between, we use a little chromatic triplet figure to add interest, creating what might be called a compound melody. Note how these melody notes change to reflect the harmony - particular the F in measure 3. To really hammer it home when we return to the Am chord in measure 5, a nice blues figure is used in measure 4.