3 days!  Let's see...Led Zeppelin was released on January 12, 1969.  I probably bought the album (vinyl, baby!) on January 13th, 1969 and have been working on Good Times, Bad Times even since!!!  Bonzo is a drum lesson every time you hear him.

Probably the best way to master the various "beats" is to write them down in whatever notation you are comfortable with....maybe it's notes, words, pictures, whatever.  Write out a "chart" with all of the verses, choruses, etc. and the accompanying beat that goes along with each section.

BTW...Everytime I hear the opening phrase of GT,BT I am taken back to the first time I heard the song, when I dropped the needle on that disc (inhaling the smell of a fresh, new LP) and was totally blown away by what I heard.  Two hits on the guitar followed by the hi-hats; two more hits and faster hi-hats; more guitar hits...add cowbell; more hits then those wicked bass drum doubles...

OK - I may be opening a major can of worms here...

IMO while learning or memorizing every note here may be an excellent technical exercise, to then apply the same approach to actually performing this song would be doing this music a great disservice.

Bonham's performance on "Good Times, Bad Times" once you are are past the intro is based on really only three patterns and the third is the sort of "regular time" with fills of the chorus. The other two patterns are first, the pattern with two 16th's in the LH on 2 and two 1/8th's on 4; and the second being the famous 16th triplet HH-BD-BD-HH-BD-BD-etc pattern.  :-)

Again IMO learn those two patterns - explore them, play with some variations (like Bonham's tom variation of the first pattern in the 2nd verse) of them, get comfortable with them, play them at different tempos, goof around with them....

Then come back to the song, knowing the intro, knowing the chorus and where the fills sort of are - and knowing the structure of the song arrangement and play/improvise/apply what you've learned.

I'm not saying don't pay attention to Bonham, but I think the thing to be learning is a sense of how he came to play each thing he played through that song - and I think that only comes by understanding his process as much as the end result.

Because make no mistake - Bonham WAS improvising - he was not playing each take exactly the same - he wasn't even thinking in those terms. He would have been looking to play a great take - but each version would have been very different on a note by note basis.

He was basically doing what I described earlier - "I've got an intro idea - this one main verse pattern and that cool busy variation thing that seems to work (the 16th triplet BD thing) and a concept for the chorus - LET'S PLAY!.

To me - THAT's learning "Good Times, Bad Times"

dc

Thanks David, I will definitely try that. Sometimes I just can't get the play note for note thing out of my system. Thanks again.

-EML.

I can remember workin' on this tune a lot when i was in high school.  I would come home everyday after school, throw on the walkman (wow.. remember walkmans?) & start shredding.  I don't really have any detailed advice on how to approach it.  All I can say is that REPITITION was the key for me.  The more I played with it, the more comfortable I felt about it. It'll happen for ya it just takes time. GTBT is a fun tune to work up so do just that...have fun.

Yeah, I'm trying guys. It's really tough, although Davids suggestions helped me a lot today. I was trying to learn a song I didnt even know the form of  lol.



-EML.