That’s crazy. That would get Melodyne’d instantly in modern recordings. There’s also a ton of classic rock songs that have the whole band out of tune by less than a half step. Highway to Hell is a perfect example.
@@Burnt_Gerbil It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll) from 1975's album T.N.T. (AUS) - and 1976's international High Voltage - is the only song with bagpipes. And THAT SONG is tuned one semitone up, i.e. from standard EADGBE up to F A# D# G# C F. Few newer songs and some 200's live performances have instruments tuned one semitone down, on purpose. But all in all, almost everything is in standard tuning. Or with their 1970's albums, in "standard tuning". Album Back In Black (1980) is in actual "official" standard tuning (A4 = 440 Hz). But previous Highway To Hell (1979) is in "standard tuning", i.e. little bit off from 440 Hz. Which is easy to hear, if you try to play along the track.
I checked out the recording, and it sounds like there are more than one wonky notes in that riff. That combined with the fact that they play it the same way each time makes me feel like they are intentionally bending out of tune to make it sound creepier.
Mehmed correct me if I’m wrong: tony is playing almost a half-step out of tune from the bass, making the song have 2 key centers=polytonality. it’s microtonal too, but OP isn’t technically wrong i think
Fairies Wear Boots is a perfect example of what he is talking about. Intro is "out of tune" in random places. Bridge before main solo sounds mostly "right", but when Tony played it the second time before the song's end it's way more off. You'd never probably hear it just by listening to the song, it all becomes clear when you try to play along, but that's the real magic in them! I would never "fix" them. Btw. try to play Page's solo from "Heartbreaker", it's almost half step higher than it should be ;D
@@dariovargas8843 I realized that when I was trying to play along to "I Was Made For Loving You". Almost pulled my hair out before it dawned upon me that they were certainly messing with the tape speed all over the song
The reason any song from Metallica’s Ride The Lightning sound a bit out of tune, is that they make it sound that way on purpose while mixing. The producer of the album, Flemming Rasmussen, admitted that bands did that to sound more thrashy back then.
Kill ‘Em All and And Justice For All are the same way. You can’t play along to One or Harvester or Blackened without adjusting your tuning. Kill, Ride and Justice are all fucked up that way throughout. Puppets is the only normal one of the four.
Yeh I realised I "fret" to hard, I hear my chords sounding horrible, I self-check and realise for some reason I'm really pressing way too hard on the string. Ease off, pitch resumed and chords sound great again.
Also, geezer and tony bend a ton of their notes anyway, to help make a more "full" sound. Also also, tony often drop tuned to decrease the tension of the strings even more.
Always blame the bass player! He's the most likely to be IN TUNE 4+ heavy strings v 6 thin stretchy guitar strings. Bloody guitarists( I play both, but I started with bass).
@@-Orion. Back before digital tuners the band just tuned to each other usually. A440 is not inherently "in tune" compared to any other arbitrary frequency, and the standard has changed a lot over the centuries. 12-tone equal temperament wasn't even widely adopted until the late 18th century, and only in some places in Europe.
@@sanny8716 maybe you should notice Gabriel didn't say he invented it, he made it a "thing". Also I suspect it was said humorously, which doesn't always come across well in posted text. but while I'm ranting- I think things like "quarter-tone bends" gets a little lost in the blues as an idiosyncrasy of live playing, especially in "traditional" songs because it doesn't get musical notation and is often ignored when one bluesman teaches a song to another. Because "Iron Man" was created in a recording studio and the song can be, and often is, learned directly from listening to the performance on the album, It's almost an entirely different type of genre. Not that Rock is better than Blues, just that it was born in recording studios and can be thought of differently.
Yeah, I know about quarter tone bends and barbershop quartets and music done outside of the Western equal temperament which you can say worked with microtonality waaaay before Tony. But my joke wouldn't be as good.
Why does everyone blame RUclips? They dont want to get sued as much as the person playing copyrighted music. If anything, they're protecting the youtuber.
Stuff like this is why I gravitate to seeing tons of live music. It's the imperfections that can make music so much more interesting and gives it life and character. Making it "perfect" sucks a lot out of what can make music so great for many of us.
You're still here! I can see you!! Just kidding. You're right! Rick Beato, another RUclipsr has these series "What makes this song great". He analyzes the songs and talks about the arrangements, the chord choices, the melodies... Well, he gets hit all the time with copyright notifications and some of his videos were taken down, even though what he does is 100% Fair Use. It's ridiculous. Why even bother with the law and things like Fair Use when anyone can claim anything and RUclips will just take it down, whether or not it's justified?
Yeah you can’t even play your OWN riffs. It might sound too similar to something someone in the past 70 years also played. You gotta be careful about even humming something vaguely familiar.
His vibrato is really astounding. Just like Alex lifeson and Jimi Hendrix. Of course it doesn't sound the way Can Halen, Brian May or even Yngwie would play, since they play mostly on the perfect pitch notes but heavy metal the sludge of that sound come from the hand and not the notes themselves. Which is why Blackmore is the maaaan!
I think it's important what you said there at 4:47 "It adds to the desinence and mood of the song...". It is true that analog era or tape recording mostly before DAW is the real world where everything is doesn't have to be perfect. We also look at everything with 12 notes prospective and we are locked into that model by first Piano and now fretted instruments. Half note and even micro note aka Shruti (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shruti_(music)#The_Evolution_of_22_Shrutis_from_Shadja_(Fundamental)_and_their_natural_arrangement_on_a_string), are fair game or composition personality as long as it tells the story and has an artistic creative side, well that's what my thought on this :)
Actually Tony's guitar is tuned a little bit sharp of standard tuning on every song on the Paranoid album. My guess is that he was using an out of tune piano to tune up. If you play along with War Pigs using the open low E string at the beginning, I get his guitar to be about 20 or so cents sharp of E, maybe more. Whenever I tune my guitar to that and play along with any song on Paranoid it sounds right.
Iommi was tuned slightly flat of E standard for _Paranoid_ but the recordings (like most in the analog era) were about a half a step sharp. This makes dialing in the tuning somewhat difficult, because if you tune a half step sharp of E, it's _too_sharp. You need to first find somewhere between E and E flat, then go up almost half a step from there. The bass is straight up E sharp on record, because Geezer was tuned to E. For anyone speculating on how the band tuned in those days: Geezer tuned his bass to a tuning fork and Tony tuned off of Geezer's bass (E harmonic at the 12th fret). That's why Geezer is always in tune and Tony is always about a half-step flat or sharp of Geezer's bass.
Tony plays by ear, his bends are intentional. Makes for a larger more chorused sound against the bass. He’s talked about his unconventional methods, such as bending power chords too. Don’t underestimate the master. You should bend it sharp when you play it to match the intended style. The sharpness adds a certain tension to the part that you feel, (or should feel). You felt it before playing guitar to it and noticing that it was sharp, as most people.
If you don’t “play by ear” your not a musician. Period. You know the ones who know all the theory and can read music -they too play by ear. The only difference is that they know what they are playing where Tony may not. Either way they both play by ear. The only people who can’t play by ear are students that haven’t got very far yet...
I don't really feel being out of tune when playing along to master of puppets, ride the lightning however and those A=440 versions on youtube are life savers.
Also, his early prosthetics were made of plastic. He melted down a soap bottle or something like that, made little “balls” and wrapped around what remained of his fingertips. This allowed his fingers to hurt less, but he lost some sensitivity of the strings, so it was easier to accidentally apply more pressure.
Spot on. Actually Tony used for many years a banjo string as a high E and a normal A string as a low E. In late 60's there was no light gaige string so he made his set.
Specifically, RUclips gives all monetized funds to the complaining party. If a user challenges, (and the criteria are unclear) and loses 3 challenges, they're banned. Enough people have to leave RUclips, that's all.
No, certain songs off that album were very slightly sped up, such as Ride, Creep, and Bell, resulting in the guitars sounding a bit sharper than standard
@@dylandawson585 Andriy Vasylenko asked Flemming Rasmussen about it and he replied that it was because they wanted a tighter tone, and matching the songs' tune to the bell (it was an anvil) in just one of the songs on the album seems nonsensical ruclips.net/video/zD8xx4c3Gqk/видео.html (the video where he debunks the myth)
No. Just because a song doesn't use A = 440 Hz tuning doesn't mean it's out of tune. This video is talking about relative tuning, not absolute tuning, meaning that the instruments are out of tune in relation to each other (notice how he said that the guitar sounds sharp in relation to the bass). On Bell, even if the instruments are not in exact A = 440 Hz tuning, they are still in tune in relation to each other.
I always thought it was me whenever I tried to play along to Metallica’s Kill Em All, Ride the Lightning and ...And Justice For All. It drove me crazy, thinking something was wrong with my guitar... until I realized that they raised the pitch, or sped up the tape or whatever the common theory is that they did with those three albums. I’ve discovered that standard tuning in 445 is nearly perfect for playing along with those albums. Master of Puppets is the only 80s Metallica album that doesn’t suffer from that, so I just keep my guitar in 440 when playing along to that one.
You're always so damn positive... It's really a breath of fresh air. Thanks for the awesome vids. My online lessons are kicking ass too. Great platform you have.
I’ve actually always been cynical and assumed it was from when they remastered these old albums and got them on streaming services. Listening to an older album like paranoid on vinyl vs on my phone using Spotify it always seems like there’s a quarter step difference in the guitar tracks. But this makes even more sense, and why they started tuning down on later albums to give him more freedom to throw people off and be in their own league
Also, my guitar teacher said the guitars on the recording are slightly out of tune from each other and probably went unnoticed when he was multi track recording which wasn't so easy then. We dissected the shit out of this song when i was first starting 20 years ago. Good video
That happens in the solo of Paranoid too, which I've been transposing by ear. He over bends one of the notes and winds up landing on a note that's not in the key the song is in. It happens pretty fast at full speed, but when listening at 50% speed, it's really obvious.
There’s a similar thing when Angus Young holds say an A chord to feedback - it can go up and down like a wave but actually it’s just press/release slightly and against the open string it gets that wave effect
Ya I like the idea of it being an imperfection that adds to the song. I love bands that do that either on accident or on purpose. It adds life to the song. Some bands want it all perfect and when they do that. Their song means almost nothing and it sounds super robotic
yes you are so right on this subject lol now with my experience playing any sabbath song i dont have as much of the out of tune sound because of having the toni iommi signature sg model i get a very good sound since its set up like his sg including string size. only problem i had was getting used to such light strings at first it took awhile since normally i play 10s and 9s lol
This has been driving me nuts for DECADES! I always used a looser technique on parts of this song with slight bends and subtle vibrato to adjust to pitch for as accurate of a sound as I could get. I just kinda figured that's how he was doing it. Like, a little nuance that he threw in maybe cuz he was recording live, and getting into the groove. But this makes a ton more sense. Thanks for both helping us realize what was wrong here.... And for giving me validation as I was probably playing the song about as right as I could have been.
I love how you get analytical about these things. I was playing along on bass, hated the off way it sounded, then switched to a fretless and I found if I intentionally went past the fretline a little it sounded better. Now it all makes sense!
I already know that his injury is to blame, he said he used banjo strings or something, so I connected those dots as soon as I saw how out of tune it was
Through The Fire and Flames by Dragonforce ends with Li’s guitar string breaking off. When he plays it live he hits the guitar trying to break the string.
Yup. The whole Paranoid album is slightly sharp. They didn’t have tuners back in the day, and him and Geezer would just tune off eachother. It makes me so mad because I want to play along to Paranoid tracks.
@@Homie3794 There are two solutions: either tune your guitar to the song, or you tune your song to the guitar. If your player has no such control of this (Pitch), then you either make yourself or download 440 Hz versions of the song (RUclips, Google...). Just be aware of slowed down or sped up versions (tempo/length of the song is different). With pitch change you still get the original tempo/length.
I'm just now learning Iron Man and ended up bending some notes a little because it sounded right (exactly in the riff you were talking about). Nice to get a bit of validation for that choice because I was wondering if I only heard that in my head.
Wear thimbles on the fingers that would be the ones he loss the tips of. Lol. Recently bought a 61 maestro reissue. Of course I've tried some Sabbath and some AC~DC on it. I've noticed in the past when I had a cheap SG knockoff this was an issue.( about 40years ago when I was hitting my early teens) I actually went to lighter strings because it made the guitar easier to play. Only problem I would pop the .008 E every so often. Was glad to find strings that came with 2 High E s. Eventually though i switched to .009 sets. I think the set that was on them had 011 strings originally. I also tried different tunings like sharp and flat depending on what i was playing.
Everyone says it: nowadays, music has to be "perfect". Drums are quantized, vocals are tuned and if a microphone picked up the slightest noise, if it can't be fixed, it needs to be recorded again. However, there are so many people who love those "imperfections"! Like that famous example, on Rolling Stones' Satisfaction, when they go back to the chorus, you can hear the click when Keith steps on his fuzz pedal. There are even entire websites that only talk about those "imperfections". Every time I told this to someone, when they heard it, no one ever looked at me and said "Wow, what a lazy producer!". Every time, people look back to me with a big smile! Everyone loves these "imperfections". So here's my question. Why are we working so hard, to fix or eliminate these "imperfections" when everybody seems to love to hear them? When people talk about music recorded recently, the word that comes most often is " _boring_ ". Again, why don't we keep it simple, keep it "human" instead of sterilize everything?
Without watching his hands I'm not convinced it's pressure and not his usual bend. He was always bending the root on those double stops enough to get the fuzz wrapping around itself.
Dude, it's not an "anomaly", it's not "out of tune" - it's called harmonic expression! Hendrix and Zappa did this all the time and Neil Young does it to this day. It's about getting movement out of the note, pulling it around to create a statement. I do it all the time when I'm sustaining using an eBow. A single note tortured to death can say more than any shredders flurry of pitch-blips! Tony Iommi played this riff this way every time he played it, not because his strings were thinner, but because THAT'S THE RIFF, complete with the microtone. Jeez, kids today!
Well, not sure it it's just me. But there's a interesting detail on the song. During Ozzy's verses, the guitar has some feedback into it. However, it disappears when Ozzy is silent. I'm not 100% sure if it's actually there, but I like it. Gives it a beautiful "metallic" sound to me;
My understanding is that it is the Laneys fault. That the Super Group 100W at that time was bad to ghost note when pushed causing a sorta detuned effect.
The other thing is also that SGs tend to go sharp due to the Neck joint, your arm touching the body can send a note off. It's how I play the dissonant bend at the beginning, just anchoring my arm on the bout and it puts enough pressure to hit it dead on.
The other part of it is the fact that he had those prosthetics put in . thats like metal on the fretbaord vs flesh on fretboard. Massive difference . very massive difference. Also back then lots of strange things happened during recordings . look at master of puppets for example. They originally recorded it in d standard and then retuned in the studio. Fucking crazy and gives it that tunnel effect , but theres impulses in software that do that nowadays maybe they will invent a pedal that will give bends that dissonant feel?
It's what makes songs special! I love that things that are a little different, gives character. Rock-n-Roll doesn't have to be perfect! With that said, it would drive me crazy not being able to play it correctly! Since I'm a beginner "hack" one thing that has bothered me is when I go onto RUclips and there are 30 different ways to play a particular song! I'd like to know how the artist plays them. My current nemesis trying to figure out the studio version of Deuce by KISS. Just that one little part where it sounds like it's stutter picking (for lack of better terms). Anyway, enjoyed the video!
Thank you for proving I still have my sanity. I was learning the solo and went to play along to work on it and checked my tuning several times because my guitar sounded so awful along with the recording
When I started playing in the late 90’s I started getting 9’s or 10’s and did drop d because of him; and that riff. I learned to play with that dynamic in certain ways. It got hard for me though when I started lifting weights for football in hs. I’ve switched to the bass now because my hands are too strong for subtle dynamics anymore. If I get into any riff or passge I start squeezing too hard. And even then a play like a heavy handed cave man.
glad to see I'm not the only one playing 9 and a half on gibson scale length guitars :) feels much better than regular 9's while still more slinky than 10's
Another thing he said the neck on his SH was very thin. If he leaned into it a little bit it would go out of tune. Remember his primary Guitar was a Strat in the pick ups fried and his SG was his back up Guitar. Also I don’t think he was using eight gauge strings because as far as I know in many interviews he said lighter gauge strings didn’t exist. So he had to make a hybrid set with banjo strings. Hopefully I’m not repeating stuff that’s been sent already. I’m sure using the fingertips didn’t help with sensitivity either. Still in amazing Song , still an amazing ear for you to catch that stuff.
no Iommi didn't get prosthetics, he melted plastic caps or bottles used that to form fingertips at least in the beginning he told in various interviews
It might also be that back then a lot of guitar and bass players tuned by ear. It has sounded to me for a while now Black Sabbath and many other bands back then always seemed to tune slightly sharp. Just use your tuner and tune your guitar about half way of a half step (50 cents or a 1/4 of a step) and there you go! Enjoy. Thanks for this video Mike!
A freind of mine whos been playing long before me told me your never going to sound like your heroes evryone has their own style and that makes every guitarist unique
That’s crazy. That would get Melodyne’d instantly in modern recordings. There’s also a ton of classic rock songs that have the whole band out of tune by less than a half step. Highway to Hell is a perfect example.
@@Burnt_Gerbil There are bagpipes in highway to hell? I Never noticed that
It has bugged me a lot when I was learning Balls To The Wall.
There some bands who tune in weird frequencies, I've got a buddy who always tunes his guitar to A=450Hz which is about a quarter note sharper
@@Burnt_Gerbil It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll) from 1975's album T.N.T. (AUS) - and 1976's international High Voltage - is the only song with bagpipes. And THAT SONG is tuned one semitone up, i.e. from standard EADGBE up to F A# D# G# C F.
Few newer songs and some 200's live performances have instruments tuned one semitone down, on purpose. But all in all, almost everything is in standard tuning. Or with their 1970's albums, in "standard tuning".
Album Back In Black (1980) is in actual "official" standard tuning (A4 = 440 Hz). But previous Highway To Hell (1979) is in "standard tuning", i.e. little bit off from 440 Hz. Which is easy to hear, if you try to play along the track.
@@Burnt_Gerbil I think you mean It's a long way? Or are there bagpipes on highway to hell?
I checked out the recording, and it sounds like there are more than one wonky notes in that riff. That combined with the fact that they play it the same way each time makes me feel like they are intentionally bending out of tune to make it sound creepier.
Totally agree. I tend to think this is intentional. Iron Man is out of tune because...Iron Man sounds creepier and more robotic out of tune.
Duh?
Yes, indeed. He does it all the time. You just bend the root a bit on a fuzz powerchord and there you go.
Of course. He always played it that way.
Yeah I also think it was intentional. Tony and Geezer knew exactly what they were doing.
See what happened is Tony wanted some polytonality in his song
microtonality? polytonality is the use of multiple key centres
Mehmed correct me if I’m wrong: tony is playing almost a half-step out of tune from the bass, making the song have 2 key centers=polytonality. it’s microtonal too, but OP isn’t technically wrong i think
The thing is because of the synthetic fingertips, he gets a slight harmonic overtone in his notes.
@@tmbrwn tone fingers is a myth started by the prostitec finger companies so that they could charge outrageous prices for fake fingers.
gary jones that’s what you think.
" Cant play more because of copyright reasons" sad times my friend sad times.
Brooo thank u for this vid I’ve been wondering about this for so long.
The fact that Tony was using prosthetics probably contributed too. He likely wasn't able to control the pressure of his fingers as much
@Zizzi's Genetics What part?
@Zizzi's Genetics What? No, he really used them
@Zizzi's Genetics So Tony made it up?
@Zizzi's Genetics Lol he's literally shown them and told the story dozens of times. Oops.
That's what he says in the video?
Try Fairies Wear Boots! I think a lot of 70's rock bands just tuned to each other. Or maybe the tape was running a bit fast, who knows...
Fairies Wear Boots is a perfect example of what he is talking about. Intro is "out of tune" in random places. Bridge before main solo sounds mostly "right", but when Tony played it the second time before the song's end it's way more off. You'd never probably hear it just by listening to the song, it all becomes clear when you try to play along, but that's the real magic in them! I would never "fix" them. Btw. try to play Page's solo from "Heartbreaker", it's almost half step higher than it should be ;D
Or they just played poorly and applied too much pressure to strings
The second thing is more reasonable Kiss have done that on purpose but un reverse
I love this song!! It's so hard to learn though
@@dariovargas8843 I realized that when I was trying to play along to "I Was Made For Loving You". Almost pulled my hair out before it dawned upon me that they were certainly messing with the tape speed all over the song
Same goes for the following songs:
Metallica - For Whom the Bell Tolls
Kiss - I Was Made For Loving You
AC/DC - Highway to Hell
The whole Ride the Lightning album is tuned higher to 444hz or 453hz, depending on the song
The reason any song from Metallica’s Ride The Lightning sound a bit out of tune, is that they make it sound that way on purpose while mixing. The producer of the album, Flemming Rasmussen, admitted that bands did that to sound more thrashy back then.
For Metallica, that was actually the result of speeding up the tape during mixing that raised the pitch of the entire band.
All of the Peace Sells album as well.
Kill ‘Em All and And Justice For All are the same way. You can’t play along to One or Harvester or Blackened without adjusting your tuning. Kill, Ride and Justice are all fucked up that way throughout.
Puppets is the only normal one of the four.
Yeh I realised I "fret" to hard, I hear my chords sounding horrible, I self-check and realise for some reason I'm really pressing way too hard on the string. Ease off, pitch resumed and chords sound great again.
Try going up a gauge, maybe.
Yeah, definitely press lighter. The string should barely touch the fretboard, the fret lines are what’s making the sound
I worded that badly but I think you know what I mean
Also, geezer and tony bend a ton of their notes anyway, to help make a more "full" sound.
Also also, tony often drop tuned to decrease the tension of the strings even more.
Always blame the bass player! He's the most likely to be IN TUNE 4+ heavy strings v 6 thin stretchy guitar strings. Bloody guitarists( I play both, but I started with bass).
Started out with the bass recently and i´m amazed at how rare i have to tune it in comparison to guitar.
Idk man I play the bass and there's something off with Geezer's part too, I've gotta tune myself down a few cents lol
@@-Orion. Back before digital tuners the band just tuned to each other usually. A440 is not inherently "in tune" compared to any other arbitrary frequency, and the standard has changed a lot over the centuries. 12-tone equal temperament wasn't even widely adopted until the late 18th century, and only in some places in Europe.
Tony accidentally made microtonal guitar a thing.
Quarter-tone bends existed in blues for decades, way before Tony started playing music
@@sanny8716 you beat me too it lol everybody forgets about the blues.
@@sanny8716 maybe you should notice Gabriel didn't say he invented it, he made it a "thing". Also I suspect it was said humorously, which doesn't always come across well in posted text. but while I'm ranting- I think things like "quarter-tone bends" gets a little lost in the blues as an idiosyncrasy of live playing, especially in "traditional" songs because it doesn't get musical notation and is often ignored when one bluesman teaches a song to another. Because "Iron Man" was created in a recording studio and the song can be, and often is, learned directly from listening to the performance on the album, It's almost an entirely different type of genre. Not that Rock is better than Blues, just that it was born in recording studios and can be thought of differently.
Yeah, I know about quarter tone bends and barbershop quartets and music done outside of the Western equal temperament which you can say worked with microtonality waaaay before Tony. But my joke wouldn't be as good.
@@sanny8716 everybody also forgets that Tony was a blues guitarist. Hell, Sabbath started as a blues band.
You can’t play a whole riff without copyright man RUclips rules asinine
Agreed, this is educational, where tf is the harm there?
Welcome to the new age
Black Sabbath in particular is a very strict blocker
Actually you can, he’s not in any danger, he’s “covering” a song. It’s in the guidelines for RUclips. You’re allowed to play along.
Why does everyone blame RUclips? They dont want to get sued as much as the person playing copyrighted music. If anything, they're protecting the youtuber.
Stuff like this is why I gravitate to seeing tons of live music. It's the imperfections that can make music so much more interesting and gives it life and character. Making it "perfect" sucks a lot out of what can make music so great for many of us.
You can't even play riffs on RUclips anymore. I'm out.
You're still here! I can see you!!
Just kidding. You're right! Rick Beato, another RUclipsr has these series "What makes this song great". He analyzes the songs and talks about the arrangements, the chord choices, the melodies... Well, he gets hit all the time with copyright notifications and some of his videos were taken down, even though what he does is 100% Fair Use. It's ridiculous. Why even bother with the law and things like Fair Use when anyone can claim anything and RUclips will just take it down, whether or not it's justified?
what's worse is that people are actually making quite a bit of money from these claims. It's a mockery of the Fair Use exception.
Yeah you can’t even play your OWN riffs. It might sound too similar to something someone in the past 70 years also played. You gotta be careful about even humming something vaguely familiar.
It sucks because fair use should ESPECIALLY apply to educational content.
RUclips went from everyone trying to cover iron man In 06 to everyone getting copyrighted
0:02 "Iron Man by Black Sabaton Guitar"
His vibrato is really astounding. Just like Alex lifeson and Jimi Hendrix. Of course it doesn't sound the way Can Halen, Brian May or even Yngwie would play, since they play mostly on the perfect pitch notes but heavy metal the sludge of that sound come from the hand and not the notes themselves. Which is why Blackmore is the maaaan!
what? no
CAN Halen?!
I think it's important what you said there at 4:47 "It adds to the desinence and mood of the song...". It is true that analog era or tape recording mostly before DAW is the real world where everything is doesn't have to be perfect. We also look at everything with 12 notes prospective and we are locked into that model by first Piano and now fretted instruments. Half note and even micro note aka Shruti (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shruti_(music)#The_Evolution_of_22_Shrutis_from_Shadja_(Fundamental)_and_their_natural_arrangement_on_a_string), are fair game or composition personality as long as it tells the story and has an artistic creative side, well that's what my thought on this :)
Its "DISSONANCE" not desinence.
Actually Tony's guitar is tuned a little bit sharp of standard tuning on every song on the Paranoid album. My guess is that he was using an out of tune piano to tune up. If you play along with War Pigs using the open low E string at the beginning, I get his guitar to be about 20 or so cents sharp of E, maybe more. Whenever I tune my guitar to that and play along with any song on Paranoid it sounds right.
Iommi was tuned slightly flat of E standard for _Paranoid_ but the recordings (like most in the analog era) were about a half a step sharp. This makes dialing in the tuning somewhat difficult, because if you tune a half step sharp of E, it's _too_sharp. You need to first find somewhere between E and E flat, then go up almost half a step from there. The bass is straight up E sharp on record, because Geezer was tuned to E.
For anyone speculating on how the band tuned in those days: Geezer tuned his bass to a tuning fork and Tony tuned off of Geezer's bass (E harmonic at the 12th fret). That's why Geezer is always in tune and Tony is always about a half-step flat or sharp of Geezer's bass.
Mike I love your videos where you get very detailed! The subtleties are important. You rock man!
Tony plays by ear, his bends are intentional. Makes for a larger more chorused sound against the bass.
He’s talked about his unconventional methods, such as bending power chords too.
Don’t underestimate the master.
You should bend it sharp when you play it to match the intended style.
The sharpness adds a certain tension to the part that you feel, (or should feel).
You felt it before playing guitar to it and noticing that it was sharp, as most people.
If you don’t “play by ear” your not a musician. Period. You know the ones who know all the theory and can read music -they too play by ear. The only difference is that they know what they are playing where Tony may not. Either way they both play by ear. The only people who can’t play by ear are students that haven’t got very far yet...
@@2204JCM That's a perfect example of the No True Scotsman fallacy
Bullshit- the master is playing out of fucking tune.
Big difference from “creating tension”.
master of puppets too, theres versions on youtube adjusted for proper A=440 thankfully
Not the same thing. MoP was tuned down and sped up.
I don't really feel being out of tune when playing along to master of puppets, ride the lightning however and those A=440 versions on youtube are life savers.
@@vault311 Yep. Especially when you have a Floyd Rose. One off AJFA is sharp as well, it's super annoying
Also, his early prosthetics were made of plastic. He melted down a soap bottle or something like that, made little “balls” and wrapped around what remained of his fingertips. This allowed his fingers to hurt less, but he lost some sensitivity of the strings, so it was easier to accidentally apply more pressure.
Last time I was this early Mike still had a beard.
I wish I could grow one. haha
@@TheArtofGuitar Could this also be the sound of 432 Hz tuning instead of 440 Hz? A friend of mine tunes with this and it's kinda cool...
Spot on. Actually Tony used for many years a banjo string as a high E and a normal A string as a low E. In late 60's there was no light gaige string so he made his set.
Watching these videos is so calming.
"Can't play much because of copyright issues" Jesus Christ, this got out of control hard. The internet is a really depressing place now.
Specifically, RUclips gives all monetized funds to the complaining party. If a user challenges, (and the criteria are unclear) and loses 3 challenges, they're banned. Enough people have to leave RUclips, that's all.
Imperfection makes perfection.
I didn't know Michael McIntyre played guitar that well.
It's the same with for whom the bell tolls
No, certain songs off that album were very slightly sped up, such as Ride, Creep, and Bell, resulting in the guitars sounding a bit sharper than standard
Joshdabomb 777 Yeah because they tuned their guitars up a quarter step to be in tune with the bells.
@@dylandawson585 Andriy Vasylenko asked Flemming Rasmussen about it and he replied that it was because they wanted a tighter tone, and matching the songs' tune to the bell (it was an anvil) in just one of the songs on the album seems nonsensical
ruclips.net/video/zD8xx4c3Gqk/видео.html (the video where he debunks the myth)
No. Just because a song doesn't use A = 440 Hz tuning doesn't mean it's out of tune. This video is talking about relative tuning, not absolute tuning, meaning that the instruments are out of tune in relation to each other (notice how he said that the guitar sounds sharp in relation to the bass). On Bell, even if the instruments are not in exact A = 440 Hz tuning, they are still in tune in relation to each other.
3:50 I though he was gonna say , you can chop your fingertips lol
He didn't just get those prosthetic fingers either, I think he melted some plastic thimbles himself.
Rock n' Roll !!!
He did. Carved them to fit his fingers. Then cut up a leather jacket and molded them/glued them to the tips
I always thought it was me whenever I tried to play along to Metallica’s Kill Em All, Ride the Lightning and ...And Justice For All. It drove me crazy, thinking something was wrong with my guitar... until I realized that they raised the pitch, or sped up the tape or whatever the common theory is that they did with those three albums. I’ve discovered that standard tuning in 445 is nearly perfect for playing along with those albums.
Master of Puppets is the only 80s Metallica album that doesn’t suffer from that, so I just keep my guitar in 440 when playing along to that one.
But MOP isn't exactly 440.
I kinda always bent that note a little in that riff, unconsciously. Amazing what I don't notice
You're always so damn positive... It's really a breath of fresh air. Thanks for the awesome vids. My online lessons are kicking ass too. Great platform you have.
I know this is an old video, but it’s not just that he was using light gauge strings. He also tuned those strings down to C#standard
That's why I love the riff.. It's a little off, just like Tony.
I’ve actually always been cynical and assumed it was from when they remastered these old albums and got them on streaming services. Listening to an older album like paranoid on vinyl vs on my phone using Spotify it always seems like there’s a quarter step difference in the guitar tracks. But this makes even more sense, and why they started tuning down on later albums to give him more freedom to throw people off and be in their own league
The mole on Marilyn's face accented her beauty! Same thing here.
Great video, Dr. Mike 🤘🏻
always so in depth and detailed, love all your lessons and explainations--keep rockin
Mikes even got the cherry red SG for the lesson. Sorry Im late to this party but Im going back to the basics so Im playing Sabbath. \m/
I think those wonky kinda notes are really what makes the song what it is and fits the idea of the iron man, who walks a bit wonky and sludgy
Always appreciate your deep dives, man.
Also, my guitar teacher said the guitars on the recording are slightly out of tune from each other and probably went unnoticed when he was multi track recording which wasn't so easy then. We dissected the shit out of this song when i was first starting 20 years ago. Good video
That happens in the solo of Paranoid too, which I've been transposing by ear. He over bends one of the notes and winds up landing on a note that's not in the key the song is in. It happens pretty fast at full speed, but when listening at 50% speed, it's really obvious.
There’s a similar thing when Angus Young holds say an A chord to feedback - it can go up and down like a wave but actually it’s just press/release slightly and against the open string it gets that wave effect
Never clicked on a vid so fast
Ya I like the idea of it being an imperfection that adds to the song. I love bands that do that either on accident or on purpose. It adds life to the song. Some bands want it all perfect and when they do that. Their song means almost nothing and it sounds super robotic
yes you are so right on this subject lol now with my experience playing any sabbath song i dont have as much of the out of tune sound because of having the toni iommi signature sg model i get a very good sound since its set up like his sg including string size. only problem i had was getting used to such light strings at first it took awhile since normally i play 10s and 9s lol
This has been driving me nuts for DECADES! I always used a looser technique on parts of this song with slight bends and subtle vibrato to adjust to pitch for as accurate of a sound as I could get. I just kinda figured that's how he was doing it. Like, a little nuance that he threw in maybe cuz he was recording live, and getting into the groove. But this makes a ton more sense. Thanks for both helping us realize what was wrong here.... And for giving me validation as I was probably playing the song about as right as I could have been.
Music is the Great Art. It's about feel, not calculation or "fix at the mix". Well showned here by. Thanks!
I love how you get analytical about these things. I was playing along on bass, hated the off way it sounded, then switched to a fretless and I found if I intentionally went past the fretline a little it sounded better. Now it all makes sense!
Your guitar looks sick my dude! I love the black cherry or dark wine red color
He didn't get prosthetics put in, he made fingertip covers, out of melted washing-up liquid bottle tops.
Fairy liquid caps
Excellent! Great tutorial/explanation. And I love the thumbnail!! Keep up the fine work!
I already know that his injury is to blame, he said he used banjo strings or something, so I connected those dots as soon as I saw how out of tune it was
Through The Fire and Flames by Dragonforce ends with Li’s guitar string breaking off. When he plays it live he hits the guitar trying to break the string.
For whom the bell tolls always gets me with this, it’s a quarter step up or something like that
I have always bent that note and added a little vibrato. Never thought of it as an issue.
Yup. The whole Paranoid album is slightly sharp. They didn’t have tuners back in the day, and him and Geezer would just tune off eachother. It makes me so mad because I want to play along to Paranoid tracks.
War pigs is especially obvious. The entire song. So frustrating. Black Sabbath is my favorite band and I’d love to play along
@@Homie3794 There are two solutions: either tune your guitar to the song, or you tune your song to the guitar. If your player has no such control of this (Pitch), then you either make yourself or download 440 Hz versions of the song (RUclips, Google...).
Just be aware of slowed down or sped up versions (tempo/length of the song is different). With pitch change you still get the original tempo/length.
I just use a tuner and match the tuning.
Write down how many cents sharp it is.
Don't forget that he tunes down too. D# on 8's and C# on 9's. That makes it even easier to dig in and pull notes up.
I'm just now learning Iron Man and ended up bending some notes a little because it sounded right (exactly in the riff you were talking about). Nice to get a bit of validation for that choice because I was wondering if I only heard that in my head.
When metal started to sound super produced and precise it lost something for me.
Old school metal had imperfections that new metal had edited out. But I like thelose flares, it gives it character
Then you should listen to some underground bands
Sometimes analog tape has those anomalies
ive used 7s my whole life, love them
Tony : i feel this sounds good
Your videos contain a wealth of knowledge. Thanks for making them.
Wear thimbles on the fingers that would be the ones he loss the tips of. Lol. Recently bought a 61 maestro reissue. Of course I've tried some Sabbath and some AC~DC on it. I've noticed in the past when I had a cheap SG knockoff this was an issue.( about 40years ago when I was hitting my early teens) I actually went to lighter strings because it made the guitar easier to play. Only problem I would pop the .008 E every so often. Was glad to find strings that came with 2 High E s. Eventually though i switched to .009 sets. I think the set that was on them had 011 strings originally. I also tried different tunings like sharp and flat depending on what i was playing.
Everyone says it: nowadays, music has to be "perfect". Drums are quantized, vocals are tuned and if a microphone picked up the slightest noise, if it can't be fixed, it needs to be recorded again. However, there are so many people who love those "imperfections"! Like that famous example, on Rolling Stones' Satisfaction, when they go back to the chorus, you can hear the click when Keith steps on his fuzz pedal. There are even entire websites that only talk about those "imperfections".
Every time I told this to someone, when they heard it, no one ever looked at me and said "Wow, what a lazy producer!". Every time, people look back to me with a big smile! Everyone loves these "imperfections". So here's my question. Why are we working so hard, to fix or eliminate these "imperfections" when everybody seems to love to hear them? When people talk about music recorded recently, the word that comes most often is " _boring_ ". Again, why don't we keep it simple, keep it "human" instead of sterilize everything?
A very astute, and intuitive observation. 👍
Without watching his hands I'm not convinced it's pressure and not his usual bend. He was always bending the root on those double stops enough to get the fuzz wrapping around itself.
I thought it was from bending the low E string behind the nut at the beginning that threw the tuning off
Great discussion! Sounds like a sound theory.
You are more than a musician. You are a guitar scientist
Dude, it's not an "anomaly", it's not "out of tune" - it's called harmonic expression! Hendrix and Zappa did this all the time and Neil Young does it to this day. It's about getting movement out of the note, pulling it around to create a statement. I do it all the time when I'm sustaining using an eBow. A single note tortured to death can say more than any shredders flurry of pitch-blips! Tony Iommi played this riff this way every time he played it, not because his strings were thinner, but because THAT'S THE RIFF, complete with the microtone. Jeez, kids today!
Well, not sure it it's just me. But there's a interesting detail on the song. During Ozzy's verses, the guitar has some feedback into it. However, it disappears when Ozzy is silent. I'm not 100% sure if it's actually there, but I like it. Gives it a beautiful "metallic" sound to me;
5:05 But hey, that's just a theory....
A muuuuuuusic-theory!
I see that you're a man of culture as well
I always think that anomaly was because Tommy tune in different Hertz, but this explanation sounds right to me
It adds to their “eerie” sound.
Very cool and informative video! I've had that issue a couple times playing along to classic rock/metal albums.
My understanding is that it is the Laneys fault. That the Super Group 100W at that time was bad to ghost note when pushed causing a sorta detuned effect.
I didn't notice really until I saw this video in my recommended feed. And sure enough. Tuned my guitar up and I noticed it immediately.
Hell, I'm old enough ... I used to play .006 (Gibson Ultra Light).
Lol, i tought you said you are Ola Englund.
The other thing is also that SGs tend to go sharp due to the Neck joint, your arm touching the body can send a note off. It's how I play the dissonant bend at the beginning, just anchoring my arm on the bout and it puts enough pressure to hit it dead on.
The other part of it is the fact that he had those prosthetics put in . thats like metal on the fretbaord vs flesh on fretboard. Massive difference . very massive difference. Also back then lots of strange things happened during recordings . look at master of puppets for example. They originally recorded it in d standard and then retuned in the studio. Fucking crazy and gives it that tunnel effect , but theres impulses in software that do that nowadays maybe they will invent a pedal that will give bends that dissonant feel?
It's what makes songs special! I love that things that are a little different, gives character. Rock-n-Roll doesn't have to be perfect! With that said, it would drive me crazy not being able to play it correctly! Since I'm a beginner "hack" one thing that has bothered me is when I go onto RUclips and there are 30 different ways to play a particular song! I'd like to know how the artist plays them. My current nemesis trying to figure out the studio version of Deuce by KISS. Just that one little part where it sounds like it's stutter picking (for lack of better terms). Anyway, enjoyed the video!
i knew it. same thing happening in "paranoid".
spitfire I mean they are on the same album.
Same with war pigs
I think it's a "problem" with most of the songs on Paranoid album. Interestingly enough, most of the stuff on the debut album sounds right.
Black Sabbaths sound wouldn't be the same if Tony hadn't had lost those fingertips. Because of that accident, a sound was born.
Thank you for proving I still have my sanity. I was learning the solo and went to play along to work on it and checked my tuning several times because my guitar sounded so awful along with the recording
When I started playing in the late 90’s I started getting 9’s or 10’s and did drop d because of him; and that riff.
I learned to play with that dynamic in certain ways.
It got hard for me though when I started lifting weights for football in hs.
I’ve switched to the bass now because my hands are too strong for subtle dynamics anymore. If I get into any riff or passge I start squeezing too hard.
And even then a play like a heavy handed cave man.
glad to see I'm not the only one playing 9 and a half on gibson scale length guitars :) feels much better than regular 9's while still more slinky than 10's
Another thing he said the neck on his SH was very thin. If he leaned into it a little bit it would go out of tune. Remember his primary Guitar was a Strat in the pick ups fried and his SG was his back up Guitar. Also I don’t think he was using eight gauge strings because as far as I know in many interviews he said lighter gauge strings didn’t exist. So he had to make a hybrid set with banjo strings. Hopefully I’m not repeating stuff that’s been sent already. I’m sure using the fingertips didn’t help with sensitivity either. Still in amazing Song , still an amazing ear for you to catch that stuff.
no Iommi didn't get prosthetics, he melted plastic caps or bottles used that to form fingertips at least in the beginning he told in various interviews
Exactly. I would totally agree with this. My favorite band, Metallica, has a lot of these traces left in their songs that are great to learn about.
So after all this time we've been playing Nickel Child by Brown Shishi
Thank you
It might also be that back then a lot of guitar and bass players tuned by ear. It has sounded to me for a while now Black Sabbath and many other bands back then always seemed to tune slightly sharp. Just use your tuner and tune your guitar about half way of a half step (50 cents or a 1/4 of a step) and there you go! Enjoy. Thanks for this video Mike!
A freind of mine whos been playing long before me told me your never going to sound like your heroes evryone has their own style and that makes every guitarist unique
I love music theory... I'm diggin' this topic very awesome to knw that about Black Sabbath 👍