Stairway to Heaven is one of the first songs budding guitarists try to play and for some it’s the beginning of a lifelong relationship of learning and playing Stairway that follows them to the end of their lives. Although beautiful, it is neither easy nor hard to play Stairway. What can be said about it is this: It’s deceptively simple but enormously nuanced and at times very complex. That means it has secrets and those secrets do not yield themselves easily. Because of this it can be fair to say that most people who play Stairway, in some fashion or other, play it wrong. And no part of Stairway is more wrongly transcribed and played that “the enigmatic, all-chordal instrumental interlude that occurs 5:34.”1
Several factors about the original recording of Stairway to Heaven contribute to the confusion over this part of the song: the first culprit being the tempo crescendo that occurs throughout. In lay terms that just means that the song gradually speeds up, but what people don’ fully understand is that the tempo accelerates right there at the point where the last D chord is ringing out for 4 beats.
The result is that people don’t recognize the opening Dsus2 to D to Dsus4 figure starts on the one. Once you get your head around that then it is clear as day to chart the whole thing out in 4/4 with the pattern starting on the 1.
Ex 2 shows how this passage is often wrongly notated and played. Note the crazy time signature changes. Ex 3 shows how it should be noted and played with the correct time signature
Check out the guitar player magazine link to read more about this and feel free to pick up a copy of the Alfred Platinum Edition for Zeppelin IV where this fresh-look at the time question is actually addressed in what Alfred Music calls their best transcription yet.
And if you want to see this executed let’s look at Hiro AKA larsgallows on YouTube who has an ingenious way of helping you get this part worked out with everything synced up correctly in time and to the drums.
1 guitarplayer.com, http://www.guitarplayer.com/lessons/1014/play-stairway-to-heaven-the-right-way/49169