Songwriting Lessons to Learn from Led Zeppelin

Songwriting Lessons to Learn from Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin is one of the quintessential classic rock bands from history that’s not to be forgotten. Not only have they provided rock-solid foundations for their genre, but they’ve served as its biggest innovators. 

Each member of the band instills the qualities that it takes to truly transcend their instrument. And when you combine them together, you know you’re in for a treat for the ears. With their high energy songs, exceptional stage presence, and flair for sonic brilliance, the band has certainly led its generation.

Some of Led Zeppelin’s highly sung praises spring forth from their compositional abilities. It’s not every day you get to experience songs that are as rooted in their groove, as involved in their harmonic palate, and chock full of screeching vigor.

These very abilities serve as a learning framework for budding songwriters. So, if you’re planning on writing your next hit, you might want to pay attention. Because we’ll be diving deep into the Led Zeppelin school of songwriting to give you key lessons to improve your craft. 

Lesson 1: Contrast Makes for Complex Sonic Flavors

It’s not hard to get a basic rock ballad going. Just grab a guitar riff or two, underlay some bass, throw in a drum groove, and hey presto, you have yourself a rock song. But what if your tastebuds yearn for something a bit more filling? Then you can learn a thing or two from Zeppelin.

Texture and contrast have always acted as the forefront of Led Zeppelin’s songwriting formula. Any time you see Jimmy Paige walk on stage with his double-neck Gibson ESD, you can infer the band’s intentions are to have a rich target sound.  

But you’ll even find nuggets of this contrast hidden in more subtle ways. Something like hiding a quieter acoustic guitar take on top of a roaring electric guitar. Or maybe even panning dry and wet mixes of a track left and right to get a unique sound spread.  

When the band turns their contrast dial all the way up is when things get interesting. One second, you’re being immersed in a gentle sound; the next, you’re rudely awoken by jarring tonalities. 

The lesson here is about making the use of contrasting elements to enrich your sound. Cramming in as much variety of sound as possible into your song is a surefire way to increase its flavor profile. After all, it’s journeying to two opposite extremes that make your highest highs and your lowest lows hit that firmly. 

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Lesson 2: You Can Use Major and Minor Blends to Create Interest

It’s clear from the get-go that Led Zeppelin has invested in a sound that separates itself from the herd. And one of the main ways the band has done that is by exploring its advanced harmonic vocabulary.

The basic framework for a Led Zeppelin song always starts life out in the minor pentatonic. It’s what is used to create bass lines and main guitar riffs for a track. But when we move towards overdubs is when things start to get interesting. Overlaid on top of Zeppelin’s primary guitar tracks are supplementing riffs harmonized by a major third. This starts to add a subtle hint of a dense and rich sound. 

But things are only just getting started. The band finally capitalizes on this major/minor blend by adding solos that are completely based in major pentatonic. In any other context, this could very well be a recipe for disaster. But in Led Zeppelin’s case, it makes for a nice tonal blanket to wrap the whole song around. 

What’s really remarkable is just how simple yet clever this approach is. By presenting the skeletal structure of the minor pentatonic, our ear is led to a slightly minor tonality. Adding in the major third for the harmony helps orient the ear towards the major pentatonic as an anchoring point. Since there’s no strong pull towards a minor 6th, the b3 to Maj 3rd feels more like a bluesy embellishment than a jarring transition. 

It’s a great lesson in making your songs stand out with just a little bit of sonic juxtaposition. Sure, you can always play to one of the two diatonic scales for your song’s tonality. But when you utilize both of them together in creative ways, that’s when you really start demanding your listener’s attention.

Lesson 3: Take Ideas for Inspiration and Repurpose Them for your Needs

Led Zeppelin is no stranger to borrowing a healthy bit of inspiration from other artists. The band practically has an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to all the songs that it has sought creative influence from. But taking ideas is one thing and personalizing them is an entirely different ball game. 

One of the band’s biggest strengths has always been to take a memorable section of a song and transform it into something that bears the Zeppelin trademark. Bonham did it when he copped the beat off of Little Richard’s “Keep a Knockin.” Plant did it when he channelled the Willie Nixon/Muddy Waters inspiration to write Whole Lotta Love. 

It’s such a big part of the band that it has led to countless lawsuits from soured musicians and criticism from the music industry. But from a songwriter’s perspective, it’s hard to deny the band’s creative lengths to make these inspirations a substantial part of its sound. 

Great hits like The Lemon Song, Dazed and Confused, and Bring it On Home would have never seen the limelight if it wasn’t for a nudge in the right direction. That’s because the band doesn’t just regurgitate its inspirations ad verbatim; it goes through the process needed to take ownership of those ideas. 

The lesson here should be clear. It’s about being bold with where you get your ideas but being even bolder to use them to your artistic vision. 

As an exercise, it helps you see beyond the horizon of your creative limitations. And in practice, it helps you construct songs that you can truly stand behind.

Lesson 4: Be Conscious of Your Musical Recipe

Part of the songwriting process is about being present as your ideas start to take shape. It’s easy to fall into autopilot and let your musical aspects dictate your song’s direction. But making a song isn’t just about having all the right ingredients; it’s also about having a recipe that makes the right use of these ingredients. 

No band exemplifies this concept quite like Led Zeppelin. Every one of the band members uses their strengths and talents to add substance to the final sound. But it’s done in a consciously aware manner where each member’s abilities and the goals for a song are appropriately realized.

After all, it’s one thing to have a bag of tricks at your disposal. If you can’t execute them properly, it doesn’t make much sense to haphazardly throw them into a pot and hope for the best. 

You can notice this conscious effort to serve the intention of the song in the band’s discography. In songs like Stairway to Heaven, the rest of the band willingly takes a backseat to allow Jimmy Paige’s guitar prowess to shine through. For something like When the Levee Breaks, everyone joins in with explosive energy to let the song’s oomph take over. They’re two different songs with different purposes, and they’re treated like it. 

It’s something that you can start incorporating into your own compositional process. Instead of keeping your song confined by its musical elements, let it lead the pack. When you have that musical direction always on the forefront, it’ll make your job a lot easier. 

Lesson 5: Using Unconventional Practices Can Unleash Your Sound

When you sit down to write a song, you can refer to a lot of guiding material to get that all-too-typical package of a track. However, it comes with an opportunity cost that might hold your authentic sound back.

The Led Zeppelin approach to this is to throw all songwriting conventions out the window. When the band wants to write a unique song, they start off with an existing piece and morph it into their creative vision.

For the songwriting process, they do things like taking a typical 1-4-5 chord progression and turning it on its head to make it into a 5-1-4-5 progression. Even the individual band members embody this approach. Players like Jimmy Paige constantly change their guitar tunings to make sure they never land on the same riff twice. 

After all, this is the band that gets a new producer for each album to prevent their sound from being too derivative. You’d fully expect them to avoid sticking to a set guideline in favor of expressing their originality. What you can learn from all this is taking the road less travelled with your compositional approach. You’ll avoid sounding stale and start sounding more like yourself. 

Lesson 6: Your Intro Can Serve as the Apex of Your Song

The climactic breakthrough of a song is usually positioned somewhere near the chorus or the end of the song. It’s what makes the most sense on paper, and it’s the standard approach to do it. On the other hand, Led Zeppelin tends to start out with a bang, not end on it.

Almost every one of Led Zeppelin’s songs has had a star-studded intro to draw you in. It can be something soft and inviting like the serenading intro to Stairway to Heaven. It can be something chaotic and intriguing, like Immigrant Song’s intro. It can even stir anticipation like the intro to Kashmir. 

Just by virtue of how powerful these intros are, they can draw you in before the song even gets going. It’s contrary to the approach of having your listener invested enough before unleashing the climatic turnaround. By positioning it right at the start, Led Zeppelin makes you want to get latched on to the song just by its strong emotional pull. 

It’s hard to deny the effect of this practice. Especially when some of the most memorable parts of a Led Zeppelin song happen to be its intro. But above all, it serves as a good reframing exercise if you’ve ever thought about where you want your music to reach its apex. 

Lesson 7: Explore Your Musical Horizons

Familiarity can often breed contempt. For the intrepid songwriter, there’s nothing more creatively draining than making the same kind of music over and over again. Especially if it’s the kind of music you’re always surrounded by.

Led Zeppelin has always taken a different approach with their musical style. The band is widely recognized for bridging the gap between multiple genres of music. This allows them to inhabit a place for their music that spans across a broad spectrum. 

You don’t have to go any further than listening to the stylistic influences in their songs. Bonham plays a very Jazz inspired style of drumming for Zeppelin’s rock songs. Jimmy Paige does something similar by harvesting blues licks and tonalities to power his riffs. And then there’s the slight modal hinting that goes on in Robert Plant’s vocal lines. 

It’s clear that the band places a lot of its emphasis on treading its genre-bending ambiguity. As far as practical approaches go, it’s the one that has put them into the most unique spot with their sound signature. 

Their willingness to explore beyond the reach of their musical horizons is probably the biggest contributor to their success so far. You can only hear so many rock bands before you’ve had your fill. But you only need to hear Led Zeppelin once to know that you’ve been missing out. 

Applying this to your own songwriting mantra can really elevate your original capabilities. Experience enough of a variety of music, and you too, will be bound to elicit some masterpieces from the ether.

Final Thoughts

Led Zeppelin will remain to be one of the best songwriters of the rock world. If you’ve been paying attention so far, then you would’ve had a brief glimpse into how the band constructs its songs. Hopefully, it can serve as enough of a primer to suss out some all-important songwriting lessons for your next creative session.