Syncopation in “Stairway to Heaven”
Have you ever tried tapping your foot along with “Stairway to Heaven” and gotten confused somewhere near the end of the bridge? If you don’t know what I’m talking about or just haven’t tried it in awhile, give it a shot. At some point right before the solo, do you get a little off as to where the beat is? Here’s a snippet of that section:
| Led Zeppelin: “Stairway to Heaven” (bridge) |
Well, maybe you don’t get confused. I think a lot of people, including myself, initially hear those big kick drum hits in the bridge as where the beat falls, though. I overdubbed a click track to coincide with where most folks hear the beat in the bridge:
| Led Zeppelin: “Stairway of Heaven” (bridge, off-beat click) |
You can tell that at some point, however, there is what seems like a bar of 9/8 or something, because by the time the solo comes in, the click switches from being on the beat to being off the beat.
Now I don’t doubt that Led Zeppelin could have intended to have a bar of 9/8. They certainly dabbled in odd meters sometimes, such as in “Four Sticks,” “The Crunge,” “The Ocean,” “Out on the Tiles,” etc. But a bar of 9/8 stuck into the bridge of “Stairway” just doesn’t make sense to me. The song is otherwise pretty metrically straightforward.
At some point, I realized that I was hearing the beat in this bridge entirely incorrectly. I seem to remember hearing the hi-hat in a live recording or something. Anyway, I found that if I shifted my previous hearing of the beat over by an eighth note, the beat would make sense once the solo comes in. Again, I overdubbed a click track to coincide with a revised beat for the bridge:
| Led Zeppelin: “Stairway to Heaven” (bridge, on-beat click) |
With the revised beat, the click track is able to seamlessly flow from the end of the previous section, through the bridge, and into the solo without stopping. I think this single factor alone is enough to warrant a realization that my initial hearing was wrong.
What is particularly rhythmically interesting is why I and most folks get confused. The reason for the typical confusion is the strong proliferation of what music theorists call “phenomenal accents” at points off the beat. Those isolated kick drum hits and those guitar chords are all upbeats, not downbeats. Since there is not a whole lot of other metrical information at this point in the song, many listeners are inclined to hear the beat such that it coincides with these phenomenal accents, even though those accents are syncopations.
Of course, syncopations are supposed to conflict with the meter, but not usurp it. I think the bridge to “Stairway,” though, is a good example of where the syncopations reach the point of taking over. How do you hear the bridge?
December 13th, 2006 at 8:36 am
O.K., so this quote doesn’t quite fit, but I can’t resist…”Where is that confounded bridge?!”
It’s hard enough to tap your foot to the “Stairway” bridge, let alone dance to it with your 8th grade girlfriend. Damn, don’t Page and Plant know that I have other things to worry about, like not getting caught staring at her boobs or stepping on her feet? This bridge just makes eight minutes of awkwardness…well…awkwarder.
Another great post, Trevor. Thanks for the song snippets too. My God, Bonzo was a madman.
Here’s a fun Bonzo “All of My Love” drum track, squeaky drum pedal and all. He liked to mumble and growl while he played.
And lastly…for the “Stairway” completist…WFMU’s 101 versions of “the song that does NOT remain the same.”
December 13th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Just randomly, I picked the Foo Fighters and Dolly Parton versions out of the WFMU cover list, and indeed, they play the bridge incorrectly as to my revised hearing. I also listened to the Frank Zappa version, and perhaps unsurprisingly, he gets the bridge right.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
I’ve always heard it wrong too - like the last note before the bridge has a fermata over it. I don’t know that much about Zep as a recording ensemble, but maybe that’s what they intended (the fermata-ey feel), and that little 3-beat phrase was just their way of catching back up with the click track? It does seem like they’re all kinda lost for a beat or two…
And I bet every music-nerd band with a competent drummer who covers stairway will play it right, because every good drummer will insist that 3-beat phrase is too awesome to leave out.
What’s the URL for the WFMU cover list? sounds interesting…
December 13th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
I think part of my point though, chipper, is that you CAN’T play it right even if you were to insert a bar of 7/8 at the end because you’d be playing upbeats as if they were downbeats. I think an upbeat and a downbeat have a fundamentally different character. The initial hearing makes the bridge seem really flat-footed, whereas the revised hearing (to me) gives it a totally changed feel.
See Christian’s post for the WFMU link to covers….
December 13th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
I think I might play correctly just from having heard so many times.
December 18th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
duh, I got distracted by that awesome bonzo link to see christian had written more.
I was agreeing with you that I had always heard it “incorrectly” previously as well. And while I think your discovery is really interesting, and does shed new light on an old saw, I must admit, though, that without the click track to use as a guide, I still hear everything on the beat. I think the Zappa cover does a really good job of making the bridge part more understandable as syncopation - I just think the Zep are too sloppy for me to really follow it in the original. Maybe that’ll change with repeated listening…
Incidentally, If I try to hear as on-the-beat, I don’t hear it as a bar of 7/8 - more like a bar of 9/8 (3+2+2+2) and then a bar of 4/4 into the solo.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
revising my post to 9/8…thanks chip….hadn’t actually counted it out myself.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
i gotta tell ya, trevor, lovely blog you have here. i was trying to read up on how one cooks up gilberto/jobim-styled chord progressions, and i end up reading about stairway.
i could swear that there’s a tape edit prior to a short rest in the guitar part. i wonder if that throws “off” the meter at all?
i’ve always found zep awesomely fascinating with their combination of lock-step power and nimble looseness (which the stones parlayed in a completely different manner), as well as that combination of bombast (this entire song) and subtlety (what you just wrote about!).
EAS
February 1st, 2008 at 5:53 am
Edward,
The cymbals do sound slightly phase-y during that break. I’m sure there are lots of tape edits throughout the song (apparently it was a nightmare mixing this song). I’m guessing, however, that the meter wasn’t affected, though. It would be too coincidental to lose/gain what amounts to exactly one eighth note, don’t you think?