Jimmy Page is regarded as one of rock’s greatest guitarists, bandleaders and producers for the incredibly rich canon of music he created with Led Zeppelin.
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But not everything produced by the man
Jimmy Page is regarded as one of rock’s greatest guitarists, bandleaders and producers for the incredibly rich canon of music he created with Led Zeppelin.
But not everything produced by the man was as crushingly heavy as Zep favorites like “Whole Lotta Love,” “Heartbreaker,” “Black Dog” and “Rock and Roll.” Jimmy was often quoted as saying his true passion was to create a combination of “light and shade” in the form of contrasting and complementary musical sounds.
These sounds often found their roots in acoustic English and Celtic folk music, and can be heard as well in the proto-metal electric sounds of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream and Page's former band, the Yardbirds. A standard technique found in English and Celtic folk music is the incorporation of alternate tunings, utilized by some of Page’s favorite guitarists, such as Bert Jansch and Davey Graham.
Graham was a pioneer of alternate tunings on acoustic guitar, in particular a tuning known as DADGAD, where in the strings are tuned (low to high) DADGAD (see FIGURE 1). DADGAD is often referred to as a “modal tuning.” Strumming across all of the strings in this tuning produces the beautiful, unresolved sound of a Dsus4 chord. Other notable guitarists that employ this unique tuning to great effect are Luka Bloom, Artie Traum, Pierre Bensusan, Laurence Juber, Tony McManus and Richard Thompson.
Today, this tuning can be heard liberally throughout the music of guitarists such as Andy Mckee, Al Petteway, Justin King and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. One of Page’s earliest uses of this tuning can be heard on “Black Mountain Side,” from Led Zeppelin’s debut album, though he originally combined elements of this piece with another tune entitled “White Summer.” Page is thought to have based “White Summer” on