Taurusby Spirit

In 1968 Spirit released their first album and soon were one of the biggest bands in the U.S. Taurus was a short instrumental that they played live occasionally, and particularly when they toured with Led Zeppelin as their opening act. The original recording had the guitar mixed pretty far behind some ambient sounds but a live recording of Randy California playing it solo opened the door for Neil to put together a lesson on it.

The piece opens with a descending chromatic bass line under an A minor chord, which was the part that became the opening to Stairway To Heaven, but the similarity ends after 3 measures when the song settles into the key of A major.

The lesson also addresses the chord inversions Randy used, along with some melody notes played in octaves and tenths.