“It’s not about playing whatever the lowest note available is”: Listen to John Paul Jones’ isolated bass on Led Zeppelin’s Ramble On

Heavier, groovier, and more melodic than their debut, Led Zeppelin II replaced The Beatles at the top of the album chart in Feb 1970. For much of the album, John Paul Jones doubles Jimmy Page’s guitar riffs, helping the songs achieve the potency a generation of headbangers came to love. But that wasn’t all, as the expertly nimble bass playing on Ramble On showed.

“You’ve got to have the big picture in mind when you’re playing bass guitar,” Jones told Bass Player. “It’s not about playing whatever the lowest note available is. You have to consider melody, rhythm and harmony.”

Jones had big plans when he wrote the opening line. First, he stepped all over Page’s gorgeous acoustic intro with a fantastic ascending motif in the upper register. Then he threw in a three-note lick after the first line of the chorus (after “Ramble on!”) which in turn sets up a bar in which he performs very fast hammer-ons, making the bass guitar the focus of the line when there’s plenty going on already, not least Robert Plant’s wailed vocal.

The track starts with Jimmy Page's quick, 16th-note acoustic strum and John Bonham's mellow yet persistent percussion. Rather than following his bandmates rhythmic frenzy, Jones generated the relaxed and memorably melodic line in the verse.

With the track playing along or a guitarist friend copping Page's part, play just the first bar. Notice any major difference between what you and your 6-string compadre are playing? In the same space as Page's 16th-note acoustic strum, you've plucked just two syncopated notes. The pacing contrast is similar in bar 2, where the bass part moves up to the A chord, closing with off-the-beat accents.

The syncopation continues in bars 3 and 4, but that's only part of what makes the second phrase rhythmically interesting. When you look at the whole phrase, you can see note values getting shorter and shorter: First there are quarter-notes, then eighth-notes, then a 16th-note turnaround at the end of bar 4.

Music theorists call this rhythmic acceleration. By moving to smaller note values, the bassline makes the whole song feel like it quickens, adding tension and excitement with each four-bar cycle.

Check out the isolated bassline below.

Rhythmic acceleration isn't shaping only the four-bar verse phrases; it also shapes the whole song. The pre-chorus bass lick has quarter-note-based phrases in bars 1 and 3, and begins to mix in eighth-notes and 16ths. The song climaxes with urgent 16th-note riffs in the chorus.

The last piece you'll need to put the song together is the bridge line, which fits between the second chorus and third verse. Here, while Jimmy Page swaps strummy acoustic playing for twin electric licks, Jones takes on the rhythmic accents that pulsated through that original 16th-note acoustic part, emphasizing beat one, the ‘and’ of two, and four, embellishing the part with well-placed hammer-ons.

As when practicing the easy-feeling yet rhythmically precise verse and powerful chorus, remember that you're doing more than just learning a classic bassline. You're also gradually grasping concepts that can help enhance your creativity and build confidence for making up your own parts.

Jones said it best himself when we spoke to him in July '03: “A lot of younger musicians don't understand that you can move the beat around against a pulse, but we used to do it all the time – and that would change the tune's dynamic.

“Sometimes we knew we were doing it, and we'd have fun seeing exactly how far we could lay back – but generally it was instinctive. We'd know there was a song section that needed a bit more urgency but didn't want to go any faster, so we'd get just get more on top of the beat and push it, but without speeding it up.”