Acoustic Zeppelin

My love affair with the Seagull acoustic continues unabated. I'm still working on finger-picking, my Simon and Garfunkel songs, and various songs from the acoustic jam meetups (the next one being this coming Sunday.)

I finally decided to tackle two acoustic Led Zeppelin songs that somehow I always thought were beyond me. Both turned out not to be that hard - once you get the guitar in the proper alternate tuning.

• "That's the Way": this YouTube video isn't a lesson, but it gives the tuning (Open G), and I figured most of it out from watching him play. Then I Google'd for the guitar tabs and got the rest. I *love* this song, and could just play it over and over. And it sounds *fantastic* on the Seagull. When you hit an open chord, the strings just ring.
• "Rain Song": a gorgeous gorgeous song that I never thought I'd be able to play. It's in a tuning I never heard of before (DGCGCD), which doesn't even have a name (that I know of). As with "That's the Way", I looked at the guy playing it on the YouTube video, Google'd a tab, and the basics of it aren't that hard. It's hauntingly beautiful, and very fun to play.

I resisted alternate-tuning songs for a long time, mostly because it was too much trouble to re-tune the guitar. I felt like I had enough trouble keeping it in tune in standard tuning, so why just give myself more headaches by intentionally changing things around. But now I have an electronic clip-on tuner, so it's trivial. Thanks to that, plus the power of the Internet, I'm now playing songs I never thought I'd play.