In this post, you’ll learn how to play Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” from Shane Speal on your 3-string cigar box guitar.
Here’s a terrific 3-string cigar box guitar lesson to get you rockin’ just like when rock music still had some teeth to it.
In it, the King of the Cigar Box Guitar Shane Speal does a splendid job at teaching all the little things you need that add up to one awesome song.
Shane describes what tuning Jimmy Page used on his 6-string guitar to record this song. Then Shane goes through how to tune your cigar box guitar to play along with this lesson.
This version of “When The Levee Breaks” is done in the key of F. Don’t worry if your cigar box guitar is tuned to open G. Shane walks you through how to use those same strings to get tuned F-C-F for this song.
“When The Levee Breaks” has a distinct, hard-driving rhythm that can be tricky to learn. But fear naught because Shane slowly walks you through the rhythm so you can play as Jimmy did.
Plus, with Shane’s tips on how to hold your slide and the on-screen tablature, he’s done a great job of simplifying the learning process for you.
The guitar Shane plays in this video was built using the same plans he published in his book, Making Poor Man’s Guitars.