Why Since I've Been Loving You Might Be the Greatest Song Ever Written in 12/8 Time

It's not the solo. The most famous part of this song is the intro and you can recognize it from the very first five notes. That space, that tension. As soon as you hear those notes, you already know what's coming.

Since I've Been Loving You - Led Zeppelin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYWS0Fxs4Y4

Most people assume what makes this song feel so heavy and swaying is Jimmy Page's licks, Robert Plant's vocals, and John Bonham's drums. And yes, all of that is true. But there's something else at work — something mathematical. Today I want to dig into the time signature that built this song, break down the harmonic choices in that guitar intro, talk about the famous squeaky pedal, and make the case for why this just might be the greatest song ever written in 12/8 time.

Led Zeppelin III — A Monster Hiding on Side Two

The album Led Zeppelin III was one of the most anticipated releases of 1970. It opens with the ferocious Immigrant Song, and it includes several acoustic tracks like Tangerine — a noticeably different sound for the band. But buried on side two, track four, is something else entirely.

Since I've Been Loving You is not just a slow blues jam. It's a masterclass in dynamics, careful note choices, and compound meter.

What Is 12/8 Time And Why Does It Matter Here?

Most of the rock music you've ever heard is in 4/4 time (four quarter notes per bar). It's simple, steady, a little like a march. But the blues doesn't like to march. It likes to shuffle.

One way to get that shuffling, swaying groove is to divide the rhythms into groups of three. That's 12/8. You count it like this: 1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, 10-11-12. Twelve eighth notes per bar, organized into four groups of three.

In this song, you hear that mostly in John Bonham's hi-hat. And every time Page plays a straight string of eighth notes, they're now divisible by three — because in 12/8, there are twelve of them in a measure. Twelve divided by three.

Here's what makes 12/8 so clever: you can also count it in fours. Listen to the kick and snare — you'll feel four main pulses per measure. But inside every one of those pulses, the hi-hat is playing three notes. That structure is what gives the song its sway. It feels more circular. More rolling.

And it gives Bonham room to drag the beat just slightly — creating something lazy, very heavy. That slow-turning engine is what allows Page to play anything from quiet, gentle legato lines to long cascading runs without ever sounding rushed. The underlying grid is wide open.

The Agonizing Journey to the Perfect Take

Here's where the story gets impressive. Legend has it the band had actually attempted to record this song in earlier sessions and shelved it. They came back to it for Led Zeppelin III, recorded at Island Studios in London in 1970.

What makes this recording remarkable is that there are almost no overdubs. What you hear on that record is largely a live performance — once the tape is rolling, whatever they played is what they got on tape.

That's what musicians mean by live off the floor. Unlike modern recordings where you can layer one instrument at a time and punch in a hundred different takes, playing live off the floor means you're all in the room together. If one person makes a serious mistake, you scrap the whole take and start over.

Now here's the part that still blows my mind. If you look at the track's credits, you'll notice something strange: there's no bass guitar listed. That's because John Paul Jones isn't playing bass guitar on this song. He's playing organ. Two hands on the keys — and the bass line is coming from the pedals of the organ, played with his feet.

Similar type of organ that would have been used. Notice the foot pedals for bass lines

So he's playing chords, melody, and the bass line simultaneously... live off the floor! I'm glad us guitar players just have to deal with two hands on a guitar.

And because Page isn't playing a lot of chords — mostly single-note lines and fills — it's Jones holding down the entire harmonic structure of the song. It's one of the most overlooked instrumental performances in rock history.

One more note on the recording: the guitar solo in the middle does appear to be overdubbed — you can hear the overlap of two guitar parts, and Page was the only guitarist in the band. But famously, that solo was recorded in a single improvised take. A one-take wonder.

What Jimmy Page Is Actually Doing With That Guitar Intro

The first lick of the intro is classic blues — something that could have been played by hundreds of guitarists before him. But right after that, Page starts doing something more interesting. He's expanding well outside the standard minor pentatonic scale.

Page uses melodic notes like the ninth of C minor (C minor 9), which gives it a more sophisticated, moody quality. And on the chord change to the four chord, there's an incredibly cool target note — a G sharp that's not in the pentatonic scale, but is right there in the chord shape.

That note is not in the C minor pentatonic scale. He's picturing the chord underneath and targeting a note from the chord not the pentatonic scale. The result sounds more melodic, more emotionally specific, and much less like a bar-band blues lick.

Later in the song, he revisits the ninth but drops it down an octave. Different register, same sophisticated sound.

And when you look at the full chord progression of this song, it is not a standard minor blues. Look at what's happening in just the last four bars: G, A-flat, F minor (the four chord), C minor back home, G7 (a harmonic minor moment), back to C minor, E-flat, D7, D-flat major 7. That's an unusual set of changes. I honestly don't know which one of them wrote those chords — and I spent time trying to find out whether they'd borrowed them from somewhere.

What all those chords give Page is a rich set of target tones to choose from throughout the song. And the variety of what he plays is staggering — not just blues licks, but double stops, power chords, arpeggios. You can scan across the tab for this song and practically see how many different ideas he's throwing in between Plant's vocals.

If you want to go deeper — including how to actually solo over a 12-bar blues in 12/8 — check out this recent Master Class on our Patreon Group. The first 7 days are free. Hope to see you there!

Two Guitar Tones, One Guitar Player

Something worth noticing: there are two distinct guitar tones in this song. Starting from

the intro, you get a round, warm, bluesy sound. Then suddenly, around bar nine, it gets noticeably brighter and more distorted. That's Page switching to the bridge pickup creating a much brighter tone that cuts through the mix.

I sometimes wonder if someone also tweaked the amp knob at that moment, because the shift in distortion is significant. And given that this was recorded live off the floor with almost no overdubs, that change had to have happened in real time.

The Squeaky Pedal That Became a Legend

If you've never noticed this before, put headphones on and listen closely to the intro — where everything is at its quietest. Every now and then you'll hear a small squeak.

That's John Bonham's kick drum pedal. It was squeaking throughout the entire recording session. But because this was the magic take — the best live performance they had — and because the quiet sections of the song make it just audible enough to hear, they left it in. The squeaky pedal became part of the legend of the song.

And that tells you something important. They could have gone back and tried again. They chose not to — because the performance was right, and a perfect performance matters more than a perfect pedal.

The Dynamic Range Is the Point

Here's something worth thinking about from a broader perspective. If you listen to a pop song from today, you'd hear that a small dynamic range. That means that most of the song loud. The audio is compressed so that everything sits at roughly the same loud volume.

But if you listen to Since I've Been Loving You, there are massive differences between the softest parts and the loudest parts. You can hear the song breathing.

And that's not an accident because it suits the story of the song. The lyrics tell a story of a man who's been working from "7 to 11" every night, doing everything he can, trying his absolute best — and despite doing everything he can for her, she's still gonna leave him. Plant sings, Everybody trying to tell me that you didn't mean me no good. I've been trying, let me tell you, I really did the best I could. This guy is about to lose his worried mind.

The dynamic range takes us inside this guys head. When Plant returns to the lyric "I've been working from 7 to 11," the whole band drops to a whisper. The 12/8 pulse just keeps ticking underneath — like a clock. Tension builds and eventually the band explodes into the chorus again.

If you ever try to cover this song and you play it loud from beginning to end, you're playing it wrong.

The Verdict

Since I've Been Loving You works because of the time signature that gives it its sway, the live performance that captures real emotion, John Paul Jones doing the impossible with his feet, Jimmy Page hunting for chord tones instead of just running pentatonic boxes — and the dynamic range that makes you feel every bit of heartbreak in those lyrics.

Most people hear the squeaky pedal and think it's a flaw. I think it's a reminder: the best takes are the ones that feel the most human.