INSIDE THE MUSIC
Key: A-mimor (mixed mode)
Novel Features: Chromatic bass line, Modal Mixture, syncopation, long scale form, irregular sections
Tempo: 70-104bpm
Jimmy Page claimed in a BBC interview that Stairway To Heaven was written to take the listener on a “journey” that grew organically “layer upon layer” – it would “start with a fragile exposed guitar” and then “keep opening up” until it “accelerated on every level”. Indeed, in contrast to prevailing rock production, the tempo changes markedly (although smoothly) throughout the course of the piece (within the range of 70-104bpm). In terms of arrangement there is also a sense of restraint, pacing of material and large-scale structure.
In typical rock and pop arrangements, we are presented with all its constituent elements
(e.g. verse/chorus/bridge with any additional material based on these), often within a couple of minutes; we know what will make up the bulk of the track. In Stairway, however, the drums don’t even enter until 4:18 (a longer duration than the entirety of most rock songs, and past the halfway mark of this track).
The guitar solo and ‘wind on down the road’ section introduces significant and dramatic new musical material to the track, a good four fifths into its duration. This sort of device – when a new, energetic section is introduced at the end of a composition – has been termed a ‘thematically independent terminal climax’ (The Beatles’ Hey Jude is a classic example) and is a sophisticated twist of conventional rock/pop song form.
Other formal devices of note are that amid all the predictable binary length sections (8/16 bars), in the ‘makes me wonder’ interludes at 3:54 and 4:41, an extra bar is added, creating a sense of breadth and a softening of predictability. The introduction to the guitar solo offers another rhythmic challenge, which – similar to the introduction to Rock And Roll – although in 4/4 has been often misheard and mistranscribed. The guitar “fanfare” (as Page has called it) entry at 5:34 features three chords. Because the third is hit so hard it is tempting to hear it as the start of the bar. However, if that is done the listener (and transcriber) gets into metric trouble down the line and has to ‘reset’ to make sense of the start of the guitar solo. This is another example of ‘unintended’ mishearing as a result of syncopation. The guitar entry in fact starts on the down beat, and the third chord is a strongly articulated off beat (the definition of syncopation). Even knowing this, it can take some effort to hear it as intended, and demonstrates the level of syncopation in the band’s arrangement and musical instincts.
There are two harmonic dialects at play here:
1) The solo guitar introduction (which Page calls a “poor man’s boureée by Bach”) is an example of a ‘harmonised chromatically descending bass line’. This may be placed in the category of a ‘lament bass’ – a device that has been employed for over 300 years in opera, concert, jazz and rock/pop. Incidentally, Led Zeppelin use the same device in Babe I’m Gonna Leave You. Here, Page builds chords on top of a bass line that descends fret by fret from A to the implied dominant note E. This indeed gives a Baroque flavour to the track (which Page calls ‘Medieval’) – aided by John Paul Jones’s suggestion and performance of coupling it with recorders. 2) Elsewhere the track delivers an organic growth with the use of ‘modal mixture’ – similarly to that employed in The Battle Of Evermore. Some subtle changes of harmonic colour are created by the use of chords from both A Aeolian (A B C D E F G) and the more bright mode of
A Dorian (A B C D E F# G). In fact all the chords in this entire piece (aside from the second chord of the introduction) belong to either A Aeolian or A Dorian, or both. By using the common chords to both modes, the piece is able to subtly ‘reach out’ into either Aeolian or Dorian to create different harmonic flavours without jarring or fussy modulations. The concept is illustrated below.