I paid a visit to Marty Schwartz the other day, and one of the films we made was of a Led Zeppelin inspired riff.

The idea was to tune your guitar down to drop D, play the riff on one string quietly and then play the same riff on three strings in a loud way. One of the things it always amazed me about early Led Zeppelin is that the guitar sounds are basically very clean. You come away with an impression of a very heavy sound but it’s really a clean guitar laying on top of very aggressive bass and drums. Of course the guitar riffs are aggressive but the tones are on the cleaner side. Sometimes a single coil pick up, like I used on the Grosh Strat, can get closest to this kind of sound. It also works great to step on a very natural boost pedal when you want the riff to sound heavy. I like the Dunlop Micro Amp style of pedal, that just explodes the front of the amp a bit – not really a distortion – more of a natural boost. Please leave any comments you may have and I look forward to hearing from you. Enjoy! I also have more lessons on my Lessons Playlist: You can find more videos as well on Marty’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/guitarjamzdotcom

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