Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) To be clear, the audio examples in this video aren't stems. Stems don't exist for songs this old. They're recreations, which is why the guitar tone is slightly different. There's also some minor differences in the solo. None of that matters in the slightest for any of my analysis, but some of y'all were gonna complain so I figured I'd address it here and hopefully save us all some time. 2) One thing I didn't mention on the main riff is that, when Ozzy isn't singing, Iommi is playing power chords instead of single notes. It makes those portions a bit heavier to compensate for the missing vocals. I didn't really feel like that was a useful enough insight for the main video, but it seemed worth at least acknowledging.
It is very rare, but sometimes illegal recordings of tracks from the original studios make it onto the web. A while back, one of Greg Lake’s original vocal tracks from the first King Crimson album was found online. It was definitely not a track created from software, because it didn’t have any of the artifacts that you will find from those created versions.
There are stems... Jimmy Page and other english blokes been saving all this stuff over the last decade... I went from top fan boy to biggest heckler instantly :( BASS!!!
Honestly yeah. It can be both but it’s the difference between creating from learned intuitions vs creating from understanding. Neither is objectively better but your own influences and flavors come out when you write without forcing yourself into “standardized” guidelines.
@@bbtb785 then I have a hard time believing nirvana was your first full song! Unless you got into the game late. Ha ha ha. Thank goodness there are so many good songs with easy beginner riffs. If every song was van halen or tool, I'd have never gotten past day 1 of learning.
pretty much sums up early sabbath, everyone kinda doing their own thing over non specific keys, bluesing it out and ending up with a timeless badass song
The song is based on the children's book The Iron Man by former poet laureate Ted Hughes and which starts like..... The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house, the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, on the very brink, in the darkness. The wind sang through his iron fingers. His great iron head, shaped like a dustbin but as big as a bedroom, slowly turned to the right, slowly turned to the left. His iron ears turned, this way, that way. He was hearing the sea. His eyes, like headlamps, glowed white, then red, then infrared, searching the sea. Never before had the Iron Man seen the sea. He swayed in the strong wind that pressed against his back. He swayed forward, on the brink of the high cliff. And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted - up, out into space, and the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness. CRRRAAAASSSSSSH! ...... worth mentioning.
In Toni iommis biography he states that the song is actually about a time traveler who goes forward to see how the world will end and upon his return to the present is incased in Iron, after decades of being ignored and mistreated as no one could understand him he finally snaps and becomes the monster that destroys society, the same monster he went back in time to warn humanity about, all of this was thought up by Bill ward off the top of his head after they were done smoking a joint.
This true for a lot of older rock and metal. We think its easy because we understand the patterns but we did not truly understand how they work together.
@Synthetic Phantasm He's not - his analysis is spot on and none of his points seems forced nor pulled from nowhere. Most blues/rock/metal musicians in their time thought of these things intuitively and went with whatever worked, but that doesn't mean you can't study their works from the viewpoint of music theory. By your logic anything resembling music analysis would be "overthinking".
I've heard this song tons of times and I never realized that the kick drum at the beginning was the footsteps of the iron man in the song. it all makes sense now!
12tone: and the flat seventh one here ties the motif together in stop time syncopation Ozzie, yakked out of his mind screaming with half a bat in his mouth: what the f*** is a pentatonic?
I imagine that Ozzy is watching this and thinking "What? I do not understand a single word, we just made cool music, what is this bloody thing supposed to be????"
Eh, I mean, maybe. On the other hand, I'd hesitate to sell Ozzy short. Yeah, nowadays he doesn't seem all that sharp but this is from the golden age. I don't know what kind of music education the group might have had going into their career; maybe he had a music teacher as a kid who dug deeper than is typical, or recognized raw talent and so got some special content to him to foster that talent. Also, even if he didn't have enough Music Theory Vocab to talk about it this way, I can certainly see him talking about the change from Iron Man plodding into the scene to rampaging across the soundscape, telling the story. Third, if it was "just making cool music," I still don't want to denigrate the musicianship just because it was done intuitively (if it was) and not by digging through a musical toolbox to intentionally choose things that would do the things he wants. Ozzy and the band were clearly doing more than just making cool music, but even if that were all it was, don't discount the influence of the producers either. The songwriters and the musicians aren't the only artistic input to consider.
Possibly. But it also helps to know why things like this are good as opposed to accepting they are because everyone likes it. It's useful to following or breaking rules when creating or appreciating music.
When I was in kindergarten, my school did a “favorite song caterpillar” in the cafetorium, and every kid in the school had to write their favorite song on a construction paper circle and they were chained together all around the walls of the building. Other kids picked a bunch of kids’ songs. I picked this. My teacher wasn’t prepared for that, but she was awesome, so she had me draw an illustration and explain the song (probably to find out if there was something wrong with me - there wasn’t). I love her for that. For the first grade we did it again, and I did War Pigs. It’s good to have big brothers. I’m so fucking glad my favorite song wasn’t some stupid BS like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
I would say E is established as the tonal center in the beginning of the song, where you hear those bends. This makes me hear the first B note as the 5th scale degree before I even hear anything else. But parts of the song are definitely in B (for example the riff before and after the first solo).
@@MaggaraMarine Interesting. I always felt like that opening bend on the open E going into the B5 chord at the start of the riff felt like a iv-i resolution to me. Then the riff ends up being a riffed out variation of the common i-iv-v-iv progression often heard in rock music (ala "Louie Louie")
Dude, can I just say, your videos re-ignite my passion for listening to music and opens my musicians eye to, what feels like, the truths of the eldrich music gods. Rock on man!!
I was in college when I first heard this, and I figured out what is called here the "main riff"...my then roommate hears me playing it and says, rather sarcastically, "Is that how you see if your guitar is in tune?"
About that intro, those bends are (to my knowledge) achieved by playing the low string open while pressing down on the other side of the nut. If this feels impossible, remember that Tony Iommi used very light strings on account of his damaged fingers. This was double tracked, but since the technique is quite imprecise, the two guitars fall out of tune with each other as they bend down, and then back into tune when they rest on the low E note.
I bet Tony and Geezer were the ones actually doing the music theory stuff. Ozzy just was "that shit sounds good, let's see what I can sing to it" and the magic happened.
It very easily possible that nobody was paying attention to chord progression and harmony Iomi was probably just making stuff in blues scale once he got the riff down. Music theory a lot of times works hand in hand with how you feel so you can write an entire song without knowing any music theory and on analysis it will still make sense.
It is interesting how complicated it gets to analyze modern music. This song and the analysis of Sweet Home Alabama come to mind. I am curious how much of this is because western classical music analysis doesn't actually work that well for anything more blues based (i.e. modern music).
Basically ya. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the whole basis of "western music" theory as an idea coalesced into a more solid form via the work of classical musicians circa the renaissance. Modern "popular" music is based on the blues, which has roots as an informal folk music based on west African and southeast Native American musical tradition. Any music with that as a base (even if its several steps removed) will be hard to analyze in any formal music theory language because its basically a totally different musical language. A good analogy is spoken language; french and Italian are different languages but still Latin based, sorta like different classical styles or eras, or more formal jazz that plays around with theory but still knows the rules. At the same time French and Italian are incredibly fundamentally different from a language like mandarin, more like the difference between classical, baroque, old christian religious or old folk vs Modern Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop etc. Also kinda by definition blues allows for informal improvisation and lots of "feel" playing. so even a proper bluesman could not invent as much of a formal theory around blues because by definition it allows for more feel and improvisations then western classical.
@@Jaggedknife11 I thought music theory became a formal discipline in the mid-19th century when everyone became obsessed with Bach and the other past German composers
Toni Iommi said in a Gibson interview he wanted to create music that sounded like horror movies because he loved watching them. I totally get that feel and you saying it just shows how well he achieved his goal.
Weirdly I have always heard B as the root of this song. The main riff never actually sounds like it hits home until it gets to the interlude. (Probably because of the guitar riff after the chorus)
I don't have any real musical training myself, but after watching videos from 12 Tone for a couple years, I understand more than I realized. The dual-keys thing here made sense to me, and the fact that I got it kind of blew my mind.
I watched the iron man movies like 4 days ago for the first time and then after finally understanding the iron man reference in “A hell of a life” from Kanye and now by chance within this week this comes out.. what a crazy coincidence
The bass part does use B a lot, that's probably a contributing factor. Geezer doesn't stay on it for long, but he keeps poking at it throughout the part.
I once was the singer of a black sabbath cover band, I love that stuff. these old songs are very artful and ozzy in his young years was a damn powerful vocalist! totally underrated.
i think that geezer butler's playing really lends itself to monophony. i always find myself coming back to sabbath because of it. it really makes the music so much more textured and psychedelic when distorted riffs are played in front of smooth, thick bass. as much as i love the playing of people like cliff burton, geezer really just makes songs sound so full with the way that he follows melodies and adds subtle licks.
In the interest of "yes, and?" these dudes were in their early twenties when they did this, and they were not BAs in music theory. This implies a naturalistic approach to composition, in which they start with a basic approach, a key and progression that feels right, then they add flourishes that sometimes step out of key but still *feels* right. "Out of the mouths of babes," if you will.
Black Sabbath was the first metal album I ever heard, and the album that made me fall in love with music, and it set me on an epic journey of musical discovery. Today I listen to almost every genre under the sun, and I believe I've been able to appreciate the nuances of these genres thanks to Black Sabbath opening up the world of music to me.
This has been my favorite song since I was in the 3d grade and it’s what got me into music, this song is really important to me and this video explains this song very well. Great video!
Hey, I just wanted to thank you for the awesome video. I am doing a big project for school where I'm analysing the whole Paranoid album, song by song, but I am writing in a way that non-musicians can understand and enjoy the songs, to understand their importance. Your video has been very useful in the analysis of Iron Man, I've never listened to the song as an epic action movie, so thanks a lot for this different point of view. I also loved the way that you explain the song, I'll certainly watch more of them.
Holy crap this is brilliant! Thanx alot. Been saying for years that this was the birth of metal. Contains all the elements together for the first time.
Just throwing it out there that "Black Sabbath" by Black Sabbath was the proper start of metal. Between the downtrend guitars and slow heavy hitting main riff, everything just builds from there
I agree as well, but there are a bunch of jerk-offs out there who will throw around names of "proto-metal" bands that apparently existed around the same time as Black Sabbath and claim: "no, band X started heavy metal with this blues-based song and did a better job than Sabbath". That's the crowd 12Tone is acknowledging when he says the origins of heavy metal are ambiguous.
@13:39 Ooooooh it's a record in a sleeve! Since I started following this channel I've been trying to figure out what a mug with a massive handle has to do with music. I can die happy now.
and so it probably is with most pop music out there! music theory isn't "here's what they were thinking about when they wrote this", it's "here's why it works"
I honestly only hear the riff at 8:30 in B minor. The A-A#-B melody sounds like a b7-7-1 resolution. And then when it modulates to C#, the B is retroactively a b7.
ANd thank you for opening my eyes and ears to this song, 12tone. I really appreciate your hard work and dedication to the world of music. I can't wait to watch your other videos!
I had just been wondering when another metal song would be analysed! Metal is the genre that I find I enjoy most, structurally speaking, so I find out of all your song analyses, I always enjoy the metal ones best
Hey! I just thought you should know that even though I have Zero experience in the music industry beyond being a listener, I still enjoy your videos a lot. I found you recently through the guest video you did for Tom Scott's channel a while back, and despite not having the basic knowledge, I've learned a lot of cool things. I have a tendency to focus more on lyrics, so I'd never really thought about just *how much* musical arrangement and the choice of notes, rhythm, and pitch can not only impact the "feel" of a song, but the storytelling too, and all the creative ways those things can be used depending on what the artist is trying to do. Or about how much thought and work goes into what all the individual parts of that arrangement are doing/conveying beyond just "it sounds good." Your thoughts on cultural topics and the bits of history you touch on are also really interesting, and you break things down and explain them well enough that even a total layman like me can always learn something new, even if the full picture flies way over my head. Anyways, point is: I know you're creating mostly for an audience that already has one foot in the door of the music world, but thanks for making it fun for non-musical nerds too!
I love the way this channel makes me come to re-appreciate songs I'd kinda written off as corny after the hundredth time I'd heard them. Like... No. Iron Man is genius. You've just heard it a bunch so it's not as exciting. Lol This and Rick Beato's what makes this song great series really help me keep my love of music fresh.
12 Tone: My dude - your videos have helped me understand and appreciate music and theory so much better - even though I have played and studied music since the age of eight, I use your videos and analyses as examples in a collection of PPT Presentations I make for work (over the last three years). It is amazing. I am now 42.... Monophony - learned a new word today. Super cool. Bm & Em can combine into a chromatic scale, btw. Billy Joel and Elton John are masters of Chromatic scales. In BS's case: Everything past 8:00 in your video explains the CS scales perfectly (Bass, Melody, Harmony, Vocals) Bass and Treble mix together in a couple different chromatic scales in two different keys (a perfect combination of Bm, Em, C# m, and pieces of the E and B major scales hidden in the pentatonic scale as you so expertly noted. Which completes the monophony, and adds to the robotic, mechanized feel of the story being told by Master Osbourne. Research David Bennett Piano and his video on The Modal Spectrum - another RUclipsr I follow for theory. Keep up the great work!
It is so unfair that this top-quality channel doesn't get the recognition it deserves. Man you deserve a couple million subs at least. I'm not even exaggerating when i say that you spared me thousands of hours and dollars in music lessons. Thank you for what you do, and i hope you can keep enjoying it for a long time!!!
Another thing going on around what you mentioned at like 13:00, the guitar stays pretty hard panned to the right the entire song so only the really held out notes go to the left where the bass has just been chilling with only Ozzy's vocals and Bill Wards drums going to both channels, is imo a really cool use of stereo.
Nice. I was a Professional keyboard player for many years in my younger days and Sabbath was one of the reasons I wanted to be a musician. Of Course John Lord was my hero but Sabbath turned me on to the Greatness of Power Blues. You really made an entertaining vid and informative for people that don't understand how music works. Thank you good sir, you are very talented.
this vid just popped up on my home page, today....my ironic question...did ANY members of Black Sabbath know any of this when they wrote the song....I'd bet that they had no idea what passing notes/approach notes, etc, they were actually using....all I know, is that it sounds great, and is an iconic song.
Black Sabbath has always been a huge influence in my playing and a bunch of sabbath tunes start on home notes that aren’t really the home the whole discography has always felt like super modal thank you so much for doing this video me and a buddy of mine are always talking about how sabbath may have helped start metal but they are in fact a genre of thier own
Nope, no whammy. The song was played on a fixed bridge SG. I don’t think any Sabbath songs used a whammy bar until Mob Rules, which came along when Floyd Roses were getting popular.
@@theEndermanMGS He used a Jaydee SG copy with a Kahler on The Mob Rules (the song)...Floyds weren't really common until the mid-80s when Kramer started using them on production models (Kahlers were the dominant locking trem until then) because Floyd Rose didn't license the design out to manufacturers until then (you had to retrofit one onto your guitar like EVH did, while Kahlers were available on off-the-shelf instruments). Iron Man was recorded on "Monkey" that Gibson recently did a recreation of. It's a pre-bend behind the nut, as stated earlier, and he releases the string slowly to bring it to pitch.
I think it's worth pointing out that Tony often included the major 7th in his blues scale. This is especially noticeable during the opening for Into The Void, where he briefly places emphasis on the C while playing in C# blues.
Everybody in Europe, the Americas, and by now everywhere else too has heard a lot of music in that same harmonic style, with variations of course, and that influences how we hear music whether we think in these terms or not.
This is far more thorough than my own passing analysis from a conversation in music school, which was something like "it's a canon except it BANGS" lmao great video as always \m/,
great analysis! just wanna point out that the passing tone between b7 and tonic is a pretty common thing in blues,we can hear in on "Lemon Song" by led zeppelin and I'm sure in some songs by Albert king,so I still think it's in Bmin and the bridge riff use both the blues note and the passing 7th I still think your analysis is fantastic thought,it was just a little parentheses:)
It's fantastic that you recognized how cinematic some of the early Black Sabbath songs are, and there's a good reason that they were. In the early day's of the band their practice studio was right across the street from a movie theater that was playing Brois Karloff's movie, Black Sabbath which had a line out to the street of eager customers waiting their turn to see a scary movie. Geezer noted that people are excited to pay their money to watch a scary movie so why don't they write scary music? Cinematic horror influences were all over the place in the early Ozzy-Sabbath days.
You'll have to run this same analysis on Helter Skelter, as it truly seems to be the basis of all metal, at least in the pop bandwidth. Great vid. I'm subbed.
Does anyone else starts playing the track in their minds at that tempo around 80bpm after the intro count in? I caught myself doing that multiple times watching 12tone videos :)
I remember back in the day liking Grand Funk Railroad and also Black Sabbath and they both had a song out at about the same time with the exact same name and they were both bad ass songs although one was heavy hard rock and the other was what is now called Metal and that song was Paranoid.
I was listening to Heavy Metal before it was called that. Got the Paranoid album circa 1972. I always viewed it in a cinematic context or as I called them story songs. Never realized how complex the music was.
I have a 97 Epiphone Les Paul Jack Wild. Personally not a fan of Jack, but one of Black Sabbath. Iron man was one of the first songs I learned on my electric guitar, and Tony Iommi is my personal Idol.
I have myself always thought of it as E Dorian in the main parts and switching to blues scales (B ,C#). Dorian to me is like a blues scale if you just add the flat 5 to it. Licks like that are everywhere in hard rock. The solo can just be in C# Dorian add the flat 5 to it. I played Dorian before I ever even knew what it was. The transitions just move chromaticly like filling in spaces between the main notes. The descending bass line ending does move it to E natural minor introducing that C natural. Cool song.
Black Sabbath wasn't the first metal band. They were preceded by the American metal band Coven (which had a female singer) and Ozzy arguably got the idea of his stage name from their bassist Oz Osbourne, not to mention that the first song on Coven's first album was titled "Black Sabbath." Also keep in mind that Coven's first album released the same year that Black Sabbath formed and their first album was released two years before Black Sabbath's first album thus my earlier statement about them coming first. Coven formed in 1967 so while they may not have been the first metal band (good luck finding any metal earlier than that) they were out touring before Black Sabbath was even a thought.
Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) To be clear, the audio examples in this video aren't stems. Stems don't exist for songs this old. They're recreations, which is why the guitar tone is slightly different. There's also some minor differences in the solo. None of that matters in the slightest for any of my analysis, but some of y'all were gonna complain so I figured I'd address it here and hopefully save us all some time.
2) One thing I didn't mention on the main riff is that, when Ozzy isn't singing, Iommi is playing power chords instead of single notes. It makes those portions a bit heavier to compensate for the missing vocals. I didn't really feel like that was a useful enough insight for the main video, but it seemed worth at least acknowledging.
It is very rare, but sometimes illegal recordings of tracks from the original studios make it onto the web. A while back, one of Greg Lake’s original vocal tracks from the first King Crimson album was found online. It was definitely not a track created from software, because it didn’t have any of the artifacts that you will find from those created versions.
Also you said "after" where you meant "before".
Another small detail to note is the panning during the intro, on the kick especially it really reinforces that walking towards you idea
pretty sure Paranoid stems are out there. at least a quad mix that might isolate guitars, idk
There are stems... Jimmy Page and other english blokes been saving all this stuff over the last decade... I went from top fan boy to biggest heckler instantly :( BASS!!!
If nothing else, one learns from watching 12tone videos that music theory is not prescriptive. It’s descriptive.
that’s really smart.
Honestly yeah. It can be both but it’s the difference between creating from learned intuitions vs creating from understanding.
Neither is objectively better but your own influences and flavors come out when you write without forcing yourself into “standardized” guidelines.
In a lot of ways music theory feels similar to linguistics and this puts it very nicely
Got into this argument with a bass player
Tried to claim that theory was (too cut a long story short) the thing-in-itself.
Did not end well.
One looks at trees and says "a forest has grown here"
Instead of looking at a field and thinking "I'll plant a forest."
I can't imagine how many people learned the guitar by beginning with the Iron Man riff.
Iron Man was my first riff.
Smells like teen spirit was my first complete song.
I am legion. 🤣
@@kev25811 We must be the same age.
@@bbtb785 mid thirties? Lol
@@kev25811 You precocious youngster...I'm almost 50!
@@bbtb785 then I have a hard time believing nirvana was your first full song! Unless you got into the game late. Ha ha ha.
Thank goodness there are so many good songs with easy beginner riffs.
If every song was van halen or tool, I'd have never gotten past day 1 of learning.
pretty much sums up early sabbath, everyone kinda doing their own thing over non specific keys, bluesing it out and ending up with a timeless badass song
..exactly. 👍🤟
The song is based on the children's book The Iron Man by former poet laureate Ted Hughes and which starts like.....
The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff.
How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody
knows. How was he made? Nobody knows.
Taller than a house, the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, on the very
brink, in the darkness.
The wind sang through his iron fingers. His great iron head, shaped like a
dustbin but as big as a bedroom, slowly turned to the right, slowly turned to the left.
His iron ears turned, this way, that way. He was hearing the sea. His eyes, like
headlamps, glowed white, then red, then infrared, searching the sea. Never before had
the Iron Man seen the sea.
He swayed in the strong wind that pressed against his back. He swayed
forward, on the brink of the high cliff.
And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted - up, out into space, and
the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness.
CRRRAAAASSSSSSH!
...... worth mentioning.
Wow, can't believe I'd never heard that, thanks!
In Toni iommis biography he states that the song is actually about a time traveler who goes forward to see how the world will end and upon his return to the present is incased in Iron, after decades of being ignored and mistreated as no one could understand him he finally snaps and becomes the monster that destroys society, the same monster he went back in time to warn humanity about, all of this was thought up by Bill ward off the top of his head after they were done smoking a joint.
That was awesome.
Thanks so much for this bit of info.
Giant Iron Dude- So a Rated R Iron Giant
Why did I imagine a giant bender lmao
*RUclips Copyright Bot:* I am inevitable
*12tone:* And I am Iron Man
It's not RUclips bots. It's the record companies
@@sandybarnes887 I've had unlisted videos taken down for copyright. Explain how the record companies can see that
@@earthling3096 ruclips.net/video/_yDdgQRWQt8/видео.html
"I am Copyright Bot"
"Has it lost its mind?
Can it see or is it blind?
Blocks fair use content
Record companies are its friend"
@@DaedalusYoung You mind if I steal that?
And here for my whole life I thought Iron Man was one of the simplest songs ever written.
This true for a lot of older rock and metal.
We think its easy because we understand the patterns but we did not truly understand how they work together.
@@J.PC.Designs Well, it's on here on YT where Blackmore explains how everyone is playing it "wrong" and not like he plays it.. XD
@@williamdegrey He plays it with barr chords
@Synthetic Phantasm He's not - his analysis is spot on and none of his points seems forced nor pulled from nowhere. Most blues/rock/metal musicians in their time thought of these things intuitively and went with whatever worked, but that doesn't mean you can't study their works from the viewpoint of music theory. By your logic anything resembling music analysis would be "overthinking".
@@technoguyx This.
I've heard this song tons of times and I never realized that the kick drum at the beginning was the footsteps of the iron man in the song. it all makes sense now!
12tone: and the flat seventh one here ties the motif together in stop time syncopation
Ozzie, yakked out of his mind screaming with half a bat in his mouth: what the f*** is a pentatonic?
I imagine that Ozzy is watching this and thinking "What? I do not understand a single word, we just made cool music, what is this bloody thing supposed to be????"
The answer would be, “why it *is* cool music”
"SHARON...!"
Eh, I mean, maybe. On the other hand, I'd hesitate to sell Ozzy short. Yeah, nowadays he doesn't seem all that sharp but this is from the golden age. I don't know what kind of music education the group might have had going into their career; maybe he had a music teacher as a kid who dug deeper than is typical, or recognized raw talent and so got some special content to him to foster that talent. Also, even if he didn't have enough Music Theory Vocab to talk about it this way, I can certainly see him talking about the change from Iron Man plodding into the scene to rampaging across the soundscape, telling the story. Third, if it was "just making cool music," I still don't want to denigrate the musicianship just because it was done intuitively (if it was) and not by digging through a musical toolbox to intentionally choose things that would do the things he wants. Ozzy and the band were clearly doing more than just making cool music, but even if that were all it was, don't discount the influence of the producers either. The songwriters and the musicians aren't the only artistic input to consider.
Possibly.
But it also helps to know why things like this are good as opposed to accepting they are because everyone likes it. It's useful to following or breaking rules when creating or appreciating music.
Does imagining world-class musicians as dumb noobs reassure you in some way?
Is this like the whole "Einstein failed math" bullshit but for musicians?
7:15
As a metal drummer, I can say this very true. Now if only I was a GOOD metal drummer 🤔
Had never really thought about the cinematic nature of this song before- good call!
I’m not convinced Black Sabbath did either. But I love 12 tones analysis anyway
I always saw it this way... I really couldn't have imagined them not seeing it this way. Now I'd love to see what they actually have to say.
@@swillm3ister they must have -- it was too perfect, and there were other groups doing the same kind of cinematic thing then. It was in the air.
pretty much. They were high on Blues, but musical education wasn't really on the table with them. They did their music the way they felt it
@@paulmal535 Considering they loved horror films (and even got their name from one) I'm pretty sure they did.
When I was in kindergarten, my school did a “favorite song caterpillar” in the cafetorium, and every kid in the school had to write their favorite song on a construction paper circle and they were chained together all around the walls of the building. Other kids picked a bunch of kids’ songs. I picked this.
My teacher wasn’t prepared for that, but she was awesome, so she had me draw an illustration and explain the song (probably to find out if there was something wrong with me - there wasn’t). I love her for that.
For the first grade we did it again, and I did War Pigs.
It’s good to have big brothers.
I’m so fucking glad my favorite song wasn’t some stupid BS like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
13:05 repetition legitimizes repetition legitimizes repetition legitimizes
How delightfully Strunkian.
i was taken aback when you said "i'm pretty sure its in Emin" because i've always been pretty sure its in Bmin
Same!
I would say E is established as the tonal center in the beginning of the song, where you hear those bends. This makes me hear the first B note as the 5th scale degree before I even hear anything else. But parts of the song are definitely in B (for example the riff before and after the first solo).
@@MaggaraMarine Interesting. I always felt like that opening bend on the open E going into the B5 chord at the start of the riff felt like a iv-i resolution to me. Then the riff ends up being a riffed out variation of the common i-iv-v-iv progression often heard in rock music (ala "Louie Louie")
@@frankyi8206 That's exactly how I heard it
Yes, because it's Bmin
9:39 Damn that's a really good Alphonse!
The skull creature?
@@dvdrtrgn Alphonse Elric, from Fullmetal Alchemist. Look it up!
Dude, can I just say, your videos re-ignite my passion for listening to music and opens my musicians eye to, what feels like, the truths of the eldrich music gods.
Rock on man!!
I was in college when I first heard this, and I figured out what is called here the "main riff"...my then roommate hears me playing it and says, rather sarcastically, "Is that how you see if your guitar is in tune?"
About that intro, those bends are (to my knowledge) achieved by playing the low string open while pressing down on the other side of the nut. If this feels impossible, remember that Tony Iommi used very light strings on account of his damaged fingers. This was double tracked, but since the technique is quite imprecise, the two guitars fall out of tune with each other as they bend down, and then back into tune when they rest on the low E note.
This was incredible! I wish I could understand half of the musical explanations you just gave.
Mood
I bet Tony and Geezer were the ones actually doing the music theory stuff. Ozzy just was "that shit sounds good, let's see what I can sing to it" and the magic happened.
It very easily possible that nobody was paying attention to chord progression and harmony Iomi was probably just making stuff in blues scale once he got the riff down.
Music theory a lot of times works hand in hand with how you feel so you can write an entire song without knowing any music theory and on analysis it will still make sense.
I appreciate that use use the double slit experiment diagram for "interference"
Not sure about what I assume is an Arrakian Sandworm at 5:58?
Ahh, @ 10:51 he repeats when mentioning Rhythm. Subtle "thumper" reference, then!
It is interesting how complicated it gets to analyze modern music. This song and the analysis of Sweet Home Alabama come to mind. I am curious how much of this is because western classical music analysis doesn't actually work that well for anything more blues based (i.e. modern music).
Basically ya. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the whole basis of "western music" theory as an idea coalesced into a more solid form via the work of classical musicians circa the renaissance. Modern "popular" music is based on the blues, which has roots as an informal folk music based on west African and southeast Native American musical tradition. Any music with that as a base (even if its several steps removed) will be hard to analyze in any formal music theory language because its basically a totally different musical language. A good analogy is spoken language; french and Italian are different languages but still Latin based, sorta like different classical styles or eras, or more formal jazz that plays around with theory but still knows the rules. At the same time French and Italian are incredibly fundamentally different from a language like mandarin, more like the difference between classical, baroque, old christian religious or old folk vs Modern Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop etc. Also kinda by definition blues allows for informal improvisation and lots of "feel" playing. so even a proper bluesman could not invent as much of a formal theory around blues because by definition it allows for more feel and improvisations then western classical.
@@Jaggedknife11 I thought music theory became a formal discipline in the mid-19th century when everyone became obsessed with Bach and the other past German composers
Toni Iommi said in a Gibson interview he wanted to create music that sounded like horror movies because he loved watching them. I totally get that feel and you saying it just shows how well he achieved his goal.
I've been improvising the solo to this in Em my whole life
Now I know why its never sounded that good lmao
An iconic classic if there ever was one! One of the first riffs I learned to play on guitar lol
Can't claim to have "learned " it but I can claim to have annoyed a lot of people with a bad acoustic approximation when I was 14
Weirdly I have always heard B as the root of this song. The main riff never actually sounds like it hits home until it gets to the interlude. (Probably because of the guitar riff after the chorus)
Most of your theory flies over my head, but I like to think something sinks in via osmosis.
I don't have any real musical training myself, but after watching videos from 12 Tone for a couple years, I understand more than I realized. The dual-keys thing here made sense to me, and the fact that I got it kind of blew my mind.
This song was the first song my guitar teacher taught me the guitar solo to.
I watched the iron man movies like 4 days ago for the first time and then after finally understanding the iron man reference in “A hell of a life” from Kanye and now by chance within this week this comes out.. what a crazy coincidence
Yesss!! I've always felt this ghost key while learning and playing it!!
The bass part does use B a lot, that's probably a contributing factor. Geezer doesn't stay on it for long, but he keeps poking at it throughout the part.
The opening chords are also Whole Lotta Love, just played differently.
Thanks for reminding me to find a good treble booster!
"... more happy, but that doesn't sound like an accurate description of Ironman."
BEST LINE EVER!
I once was the singer of a black sabbath cover band, I love that stuff. these old songs are very artful and ozzy in his young years was a damn powerful vocalist! totally underrated.
i think that geezer butler's playing really lends itself to monophony. i always find myself coming back to sabbath because of it. it really makes the music so much more textured and psychedelic when distorted riffs are played in front of smooth, thick bass. as much as i love the playing of people like cliff burton, geezer really just makes songs sound so full with the way that he follows melodies and adds subtle licks.
I just want to say your channel is a unique and shining gem in the world of music. You are truly a class act. Thank you for doing what you do!
Ozzy: "What?!"
HAHAHAHAHA exactly
Me: Hurrgh *Blank slack jawed stare intensifies.*
“Mate… what the fuck is a pentatonic”
In the interest of "yes, and?" these dudes were in their early twenties when they did this, and they were not BAs in music theory. This implies a naturalistic approach to composition, in which they start with a basic approach, a key and progression that feels right, then they add flourishes that sometimes step out of key but still *feels* right. "Out of the mouths of babes," if you will.
Black Sabbath was the first metal album I ever heard, and the album that made me fall in love with music, and it set me on an epic journey of musical discovery. Today I listen to almost every genre under the sun, and I believe I've been able to appreciate the nuances of these genres thanks to Black Sabbath opening up the world of music to me.
Wow, i didn't really realize how much ramin djiwadi was influenced by this song for his pacific rim theme.
To be fair, Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine was also involved with Pacific Rim
This has been my favorite song since I was in the 3d grade and it’s what got me into music, this song is really important to me and this video explains this song very well. Great video!
Hey, I just wanted to thank you for the awesome video. I am doing a big project for school where I'm analysing the whole Paranoid album, song by song, but I am writing in a way that non-musicians can understand and enjoy the songs, to understand their importance. Your video has been very useful in the analysis of Iron Man, I've never listened to the song as an epic action movie, so thanks a lot for this different point of view. I also loved the way that you explain the song, I'll certainly watch more of them.
Holy crap this is brilliant! Thanx alot. Been saying for years that this was the birth of metal. Contains all the elements together for the first time.
Tony Iommi said he was really into Django Reinhardt which might explain half step approaches up to chord tones + descending chromatic bass maybeez
Just throwing it out there that "Black Sabbath" by Black Sabbath was the proper start of metal. Between the downtrend guitars and slow heavy hitting main riff, everything just builds from there
I agree as well, but there are a bunch of jerk-offs out there who will throw around names of "proto-metal" bands that apparently existed around the same time as Black Sabbath and claim: "no, band X started heavy metal with this blues-based song and did a better job than Sabbath". That's the crowd 12Tone is acknowledging when he says the origins of heavy metal are ambiguous.
Gotta love the good ole Guitar Pro MIDI's in the scale and chord sounds. I see you fam. Great shit as always!!
Fantastic work 12Tone! Music works at an emotional level, so its so interesting to understand WHY it does from the theory standpoint.
@13:39 Ooooooh it's a record in a sleeve! Since I started following this channel I've been trying to figure out what a mug with a massive handle has to do with music. I can die happy now.
I laughed out loud real hard when you drew the astronaut for "we were already in B the whole time"
I sersly doubt Tony was thinking all of this when writing the part. Prolly more like , " Yeah! That sound badass!".
and so it probably is with most pop music out there! music theory isn't "here's what they were thinking about when they wrote this", it's "here's why it works"
@@fendermarxist Or even more accurately, "here's HOW it works".
@@MaggaraMarine or both.
Writing???!!!! They just played
Iommi is easily the king of riffs. Into The Void is my favorite riff. Well, riffs, plural. Lol. But that doomy intro riff is legendary
I honestly only hear the riff at 8:30 in B minor. The A-A#-B melody sounds like a b7-7-1 resolution. And then when it modulates to C#, the B is retroactively a b7.
ANd thank you for opening my eyes and ears to this song, 12tone. I really appreciate your hard work and dedication to the world of music. I can't wait to watch your other videos!
This is one of the coolest ways I've seen of music being dissected
I had just been wondering when another metal song would be analysed! Metal is the genre that I find I enjoy most, structurally speaking, so I find out of all your song analyses, I always enjoy the metal ones best
Hey! I just thought you should know that even though I have Zero experience in the music industry beyond being a listener, I still enjoy your videos a lot. I found you recently through the guest video you did for Tom Scott's channel a while back, and despite not having the basic knowledge, I've learned a lot of cool things. I have a tendency to focus more on lyrics, so I'd never really thought about just *how much* musical arrangement and the choice of notes, rhythm, and pitch can not only impact the "feel" of a song, but the storytelling too, and all the creative ways those things can be used depending on what the artist is trying to do. Or about how much thought and work goes into what all the individual parts of that arrangement are doing/conveying beyond just "it sounds good." Your thoughts on cultural topics and the bits of history you touch on are also really interesting, and you break things down and explain them well enough that even a total layman like me can always learn something new, even if the full picture flies way over my head.
Anyways, point is: I know you're creating mostly for an audience that already has one foot in the door of the music world, but thanks for making it fun for non-musical nerds too!
I love the way this channel makes me come to re-appreciate songs I'd kinda written off as corny after the hundredth time I'd heard them. Like... No. Iron Man is genius. You've just heard it a bunch so it's not as exciting. Lol
This and Rick Beato's what makes this song great series really help me keep my love of music fresh.
12 Tone: My dude - your videos have helped me understand and appreciate music and theory so much better - even though I have played and studied music since the age of eight, I use your videos and analyses as examples in a collection of PPT Presentations I make for work (over the last three years). It is amazing. I am now 42....
Monophony - learned a new word today. Super cool. Bm & Em can combine into a chromatic scale, btw. Billy Joel and Elton John are masters of Chromatic scales.
In BS's case: Everything past 8:00 in your video explains the CS scales perfectly (Bass, Melody, Harmony, Vocals) Bass and Treble mix together in a couple different chromatic scales in two different keys (a perfect combination of Bm, Em, C# m, and pieces of the E and B major scales hidden in the pentatonic scale as you so expertly noted. Which completes the monophony, and adds to the robotic, mechanized feel of the story being told by Master Osbourne.
Research David Bennett Piano and his video on The Modal Spectrum - another RUclipsr I follow for theory. Keep up the great work!
Wanna see some Rush on this channel. La Villa Strangiato, Red Barchetta, Freewill, etc. Or 2112 if you want 30 hours of footage
It is so unfair that this top-quality channel doesn't get the recognition it deserves. Man you deserve a couple million subs at least. I'm not even exaggerating when i say that you spared me thousands of hours and dollars in music lessons. Thank you for what you do, and i hope you can keep enjoying it for a long time!!!
I came here thinking I'd find out about the background of the song and such. What I got was very different, but freaking awesome.
Can you take apart Judas Priest - Beyond the Realms of Death?
Super under-rated.
Great analysis, kind of a lot of things I was thinking about while learning the song on guitar
i saw the title ans jumped from my seat, love the channel and this song
Another thing going on around what you mentioned at like 13:00, the guitar stays pretty hard panned to the right the entire song so only the really held out notes go to the left where the bass has just been chilling with only Ozzy's vocals and Bill Wards drums going to both channels, is imo a really cool use of stereo.
Nice. I was a Professional keyboard player for many years in my younger days and Sabbath was one of the reasons I wanted to be a musician. Of Course John Lord was my hero but Sabbath turned me on to the Greatness of Power Blues. You really made an entertaining vid and informative for people that don't understand how music works. Thank you good sir, you are very talented.
I love this song a 1000x more. Thank you
FYI: Love your approach to breaking down any of the songs I've watched so far. Keep up the Good work!
yesterday was ozzy's bday! happy 72nd ozzy!
this vid just popped up on my home page, today....my ironic question...did ANY members of Black Sabbath know any of this when they wrote the song....I'd bet that they had no idea what passing notes/approach notes, etc, they were actually using....all I know, is that it sounds great, and is an iconic song.
Black Sabbath has always been a huge influence in my playing and a bunch of sabbath tunes start on home notes that aren’t really the home the whole discography has always felt like super modal thank you so much for doing this video me and a buddy of mine are always talking about how sabbath may have helped start metal but they are in fact a genre of thier own
Every time I watch these I think about how sore you arm is, also do you ever mess up drawing something at times?
That first black sabbath show had to feel so good
0:40 I always thought he was using a whammy bar
Nah, press the low E string behind the nut and you get that sound. Felt great learning that, have fun.
@@Sangreezy yeah, that blew my mind when I first learned that's how Iommi did it
Nope, no whammy. The song was played on a fixed bridge SG. I don’t think any Sabbath songs used a whammy bar until Mob Rules, which came along when Floyd Roses were getting popular.
@@Sangreezy Yup. But you can get the same sound with a floyd trem. Or coming down from a bend on a 7 string.
@@theEndermanMGS He used a Jaydee SG copy with a Kahler on The Mob Rules (the song)...Floyds weren't really common until the mid-80s when Kramer started using them on production models (Kahlers were the dominant locking trem until then) because Floyd Rose didn't license the design out to manufacturers until then (you had to retrofit one onto your guitar like EVH did, while Kahlers were available on off-the-shelf instruments).
Iron Man was recorded on "Monkey" that Gibson recently did a recreation of. It's a pre-bend behind the nut, as stated earlier, and he releases the string slowly to bring it to pitch.
Awesome content and insight! Its so great to listen to an "oldie" with new ears. :D
Black Sabbath is the greatest band of all time - don't change my mind
I think it's worth pointing out that Tony often included the major 7th in his blues scale. This is especially noticeable during the opening for Into The Void, where he briefly places emphasis on the C while playing in C# blues.
Another piece that shows viewing everything in the lens of the harmonic style of 18th Century European musicians for analysis isn't always meaningful.
Everybody in Europe, the Americas, and by now everywhere else too has heard a lot of music in that same harmonic style, with variations of course, and that influences how we hear music whether we think in these terms or not.
#HeyJoe
I know nothing about music but this was fascinating to watch cause I love metal, ozzy and sabbath lol
Wow! Really that was really intense!
But, now I think I understand more how the song was constructed, thanks.
This is far more thorough than my own passing analysis from a conversation in music school, which was something like "it's a canon except it BANGS" lmao great video as always \m/,
great analysis! just wanna point out that the passing tone between b7 and tonic is a pretty common thing in blues,we can hear in on "Lemon Song" by led zeppelin and I'm sure in some songs by Albert king,so I still think it's in Bmin and the bridge riff use both the blues note and the passing 7th
I still think your analysis is fantastic thought,it was just a little parentheses:)
I love the sandworm for rhythm
I know nothing about music theory or how to read it but I really enjoy this for some reason, thank you RUclips recommended
It's fantastic that you recognized how cinematic some of the early Black Sabbath songs are, and there's a good reason that they were.
In the early day's of the band their practice studio was right across the street from a movie theater that was playing Brois Karloff's movie, Black Sabbath which had a line out to the street of eager customers waiting their turn to see a scary movie. Geezer noted that people are excited to pay their money to watch a scary movie so why don't they write scary music? Cinematic horror influences were all over the place in the early Ozzy-Sabbath days.
I have no idea what most of what you're saying means but I like listening to it.
You'll have to run this same analysis on Helter Skelter, as it truly seems to be the basis of all metal, at least in the pop bandwidth. Great vid. I'm subbed.
That bend behind the nut was a cool thing they added before the I am iron man part
I got stoned as hell and clicked this video expecting a story, but got the whole ass songs MUSIC explained! Thank you!
I need to go back and listen to Iron Man again after listening to your break down
This is a cool insight into music that i have no understanding of but still find very interesting
Does anyone else starts playing the track in their minds at that tempo around 80bpm after the intro count in? I caught myself doing that multiple times watching 12tone videos :)
imagine being a stoned teenager in 1970 listening to this song/album for the first time. that must have been pretty sweet
iron man has always been one of my favs
I remember back in the day liking Grand Funk Railroad and also Black Sabbath and they both had a song out at about the same time with the exact same name and they were both bad ass songs although one was heavy hard rock and the other was what is now called Metal and that song was Paranoid.
I really want to see you analyse Slayer - Raining Blood, something heavy and evil, yet demented and fast.
I was listening to Heavy Metal before it was called that. Got the Paranoid album circa 1972. I always viewed it in a cinematic context or as I called them story songs. Never realized how complex the music was.
I have a 97 Epiphone Les Paul Jack Wild. Personally not a fan of Jack, but one of Black Sabbath. Iron man was one of the first songs I learned on my electric guitar, and Tony Iommi is my personal Idol.
I have myself always thought of it as E Dorian in the main parts and switching to blues scales (B ,C#). Dorian to me is like a blues scale if you just add the flat 5 to it. Licks like that are everywhere in hard rock. The solo can just be in C# Dorian add the flat 5 to it. I played Dorian before I ever even knew what it was. The transitions just move chromaticly like filling in spaces between the main notes. The descending bass line ending does move it to E natural minor introducing that C natural. Cool song.
Black Sabbath wasn't the first metal band. They were preceded by the American metal band Coven (which had a female singer) and Ozzy arguably got the idea of his stage name from their bassist Oz Osbourne, not to mention that the first song on Coven's first album was titled "Black Sabbath."
Also keep in mind that Coven's first album released the same year that Black Sabbath formed and their first album was released two years before Black Sabbath's first album thus my earlier statement about them coming first.
Coven formed in 1967 so while they may not have been the first metal band (good luck finding any metal earlier than that) they were out touring before Black Sabbath was even a thought.
I needed this today. Thank you 🙇