Up The Stairway - This arrangement came to me after teaching Stairway To Heaven countless times. I was explaining the chord progression to students and started seeing the possibilities of phrases you could play over it. The truth is I wrote it while being stood up by some students and jamming in the teaching studio. I have a belief that whatever guitar and amp one uses when writing a musical piece, 9 out of 10 times it make sense to use the same guitar and amp to record that piece with. So on the recording day I went back to the teaching studio and grabbed that amp! Turns out the recording had the same guitar but a mix of the same amp and two other ones.

Just like anyone else I learned to play Stairway at a very young age, As a matter of fact I remember this was the song that first taught me how to bar 3 strings with my first finger. This was when I started playing classical guitar before even picking up the electric guitar. It took me years to understand the chord progression actually has a chromatic descending bass line. This creates a pretty interesting chord sequence with lots of possibilities to play over. I started improvising over those chord changes without using a pick so the whole piece is finger picked. It seems like finger picking on electric guitar is becoming a big part of my style.

When I play it live during my show I sit at the edge of the stage and play it alone, I've had times when I played it to really big crowds. At those moments I still remember coming up with it in my little teaching studio and now playing it to a big crowd reminds me that I Live The Dream.