Learn to play Good Times, Bad Times by Led Zeppelin
Featuring your favorite songs, Melodics creates bite-sized lessons that level up your skills on the drums.
Follow our step by step breakdown of Good Times, Bad Times to listen to every part and learn how to play it yourself. Want to take your skills even further? Download the Melodics app where you can access hundreds of lessons, track every hit and measure your improvement.
Biography
Led Zeppelin, one of the pioneering bands in hard rock and heavy metal, features John Bonham as their legendary drummer. "Good Times, Bad Times" is one of their early hits and a perfect example of Bonham's powerful and innovative drumming style. His groundbreaking techniques and powerful drum sound have influenced generations of rock drummers.
Intro
Start by playing hits with the guitar and bass on the snare, low tom, and kick. After 5 repeats, play a fill moving from snare to hi and low tom. Remember to swing your notes!
Verse
The verse comprises a two bar repeating groove. Watch for the quick double backbeat snares played on beats 2-e and 4-e, and use your left hand to move from the hi to low toms in the second bar.
Chorus 1
Move to the crash for the chorus. On beat 2-a, play a kick in the first bar, and a snare in the second, and repeat again, finishing with the fill from the intro.
Solo
Continue the two bar chorus groove throughout this solo section.
Last chorus and outro
This last chorus is the same as the previous one: play four bars of the groove, followed by the intro fill. Then return to the verse groove from before.
Outro (pt. 2)
Vary up the verse pattern for the outro here, moving the 1/16 note double backbeats from the snare to the hi and low toms. Continue the verse pattern three more times, and finish on the fill and a crash.
Combine and play
Combine the sections to play the full arrangement.
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FAQs
- Led Zeppelin's Good Times, Bad Times is a great song to play for intermediate and advanced drummers to play. Download Melodics to break down the song and play other lessons and songs for all skill levels.
- Precision and power during the fast and energetic drum fills and rolls, strong sense of timing and ability to lock in with the changing rhythms and tempos, skill in playing dynamic patterns that match the song's bluesy and rock 'n' roll style.
- 94 bpm
- 4/4
- A major
You can navigate to where Songs are in Melodics via the [Explore] >[Songs] section of the app.
Anyone with Melodics and a MIDI drums, keys or pads instrument can browse and audio preview any song in the catalog for free. Currently, you must have a subscription for a Melodics Songs plan in order to access the learning and playing component of Songs lesson content.
- Melodics subscribers prior to our September 1st 2022 launch have a free upgrade to the Songs tier from your Standard plan (thanks for believing in us!). Missed the memo? Get in touch.
- For Standard Tier subscribers (post September 1st 2022) and Melodics free users: Check out Melodics’ plans to upgrade to Songs, visit melodics.com/plans
The high caliber to which our music team produce our renditions for each song and try to capture the original sound and spirit behind the music and artists is unparalleled in the world of music-learning apps.
It’s really important when you’re learning popular music that you get a proper chance to focus without distraction — that means no bad renditions, dinky instruments or shoddy vocal attempts allowed!
With Melodics, we want your experience of playing your favorite songs to feel authentic — like you’re sitting in with the band itself
Melodics launched Songs on September 1st, 2022 with 59 songs in the catalog. Across keys, pads and drums instruments, with multiple levels of difficulty for each song, that’s over 200 distinct lessons for songs to play, plus 1500+ lessons, exercises, courses and a Guided Path to get your skills up to speed!
We always have more Songs in production, and we’ll be doing more Song bundle drops regularly so the catalog grows and stays fresh.
We love to hear what the people want. The request line is always open! Drop us a line or get involved with the Melodics Facebook Community.
Songs are only available to Premium plan subscribers. As a free user you can preview songs and hear how they sound by hitting the lesson audio preview. If you’d like an idea of how learning songs with Melodics can benefit your broader musical journey, check out our article on navigating your learning journey.