The Lemon Song...

[ToucanDelight]

Can anyone help me?

I'm learning Led Zeppelin's, 'The Lemon Song' and I've fallen at the first hurdle.

0--0--0--0--0--0--0------
0--0--0--0--0--0--0-----8
-------------------------7 etc etc...
-------------------------6
-------------------------7
0--0--4--4--5--5--7--0---

How do you play these notes without catching the middle ones. Is it finger picking and then into the chord? I want to play it with my plectrum, so am I just going to have to learn how to mute those strings in between??

Any tips/help will be warmly received! :)

Toucan_

[CSchlegel]

Is it finger picking and then into the chord?
You can do it that way. It's definitely not going to sound right if you mute the strings and strum across.

Since you want to use your pick for other parts of the song, use hybrid picking: hold your pick as usual, pick the low bass line on the bottom E string with your pick (thumb and index finger), use your middle (and or ring finger also) to pluck the high E and B strings at the same time.

I don't know how Jimmy Page actually did it (maybe hybrid picking with a thumb pick?). But hybrid picking is the best solution.

[hunter60]

Whew. That makes sense. I have seen this sort of thing before in other songs and couldn't quite come up with a decent idea about it. :)

[hunter1801]

I use that technique a lot (probably more than I'm supposed to, but I haven't tried learning full on finger picking stuff yet lol). The pick accents the low note a lot more, so make sure to not make it stand out too much and have it drown out the finger picking your doing on the bottom notes.