Scroll down for full fingerstyle guitar lesson (with tab/video tutorial) of Going to California by Led Zeppelin.

Going to California was written by Jimmy Page/Robert Plant and appears on Led Zeppelin's album Led Zeppelin IV, released in 1971. The recording of the song has many layers of acoustic guitar, so for this lesson I've stripped it down a bit. I've added in the more recognisable parts and condensed it all down to just one guitar.

Going to California is no. 42 on my Top 60 Fingerpicking Songs of ALL TIME list. If you've not seen the list be sure to check it out and sign up to my weekly email lesson. That way you won't miss learning any of these great fingerstyle songs.

Going to California Song details:

• Key - D major
• Tempo - 78 bpm
• Tuning - double drop D (D, A, D, G, B, D)
• Difficulty - intermediate - advanced

Structure

Intro, verse x2 (minus last 4 bars on the 2nd verse), bridge, verse, outro.

Intro

The intro to Going to California is 4 bars of a static D chord being fingerpicked. Focus on getting your thumb alternating between the E and D strings very accurately, if it's out of sync then everything else will fall apart.

I've included the mandolin lick into the tab here, it's quite hard to play but such a great moment in the song, so I recommend putting the effort in to learn it. Having said that, if it is too hard you can of course take it out and just play another bar of the arpeggiated D chord.

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Verse

There's a lot going on in the verse but essentially you are just playing a G major chord to a D chord. Please don't get too caught up on playing it exactly as the tab says, this is the kind of song that has some room for manoeuvre. Everybody you see plays this song slightly differently, likely because it has so many guitar layers.

Bridge

Probably one of easier the parts to the song here, you're just arpeggiating the chords with a straightforward fingerpicking pattern.

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Outro

You could simply just play the pattern from the intro here to fade, but if you listen carefully to the recording you can hear that there are some very small nuances. I've added them into tab.

If you want to make sure that you're really on the right track with fingerpicking, then try one of my fingerstyle guitar courses - find out more here.

If you have any questions or want to share anything at all, then please leave a comment below.

I hope you've found this lesson useful and thank you for reading.