Heaven & Hell
by Tony Iommi
from the pages of Guitar World Online
"To the Devil His Due" (May 1998)
Adding vibrato to chords and evil sounding intervals
All right mates! For the first time in absolutely ages I'm actually writing a
column in the same town I wrote the last one! Yes, you've guessed it, I'm still
in LA mixing the live Black Sabbath album and working on my solo record at the
same time. Doing these two projects simultaneously makes me feel a bit like a
bleedin' juggler at times, but I'm really pleased with how they're both coming
along, so it's well worth the aggro.
Over the last couple of issues we've been talking about ways you can add extra
heaviness and fullness to a riff: palm-muting, downpicking, tuning down to C#,
letting the open low E string note ring out whenever possible, chugging it and
also doubling it with the E note at the seventh fret on the A string. We
finished the last column by looking at the intro riff to "Children of the Grave"
[Master of Reality]. As you may remember, to fatten-up this riff I not only
double the open low E string, I also add vibrato to the E note on the A string
to add a bit of a chorus effect. I do the same exact thing in the verse riff,
too (see FIGURE 1 ). Actually, when I'm playing FIGURE 1 I fret the E note on
the A string with my little finger so I can play the G5 power chord that happens
every couple of bars without having to move my right (fretboard) hand much.
I do this for two reasons: 1) by hardly having to move my left hand, I minimize
that annoying "scraping" sound that invariably happens when you slide your hand
up or down the neck and you're using a lot of distortion; 2) it makes the riff a
lot easier to play and I'm a lazy bugger at heart!
Shake Me
Another thing you can do to fill things out in a riff is add finger vibrato to
power chords. Some people will probably tell you that you're not supposed to do
this sort of thing, but I've been doing it for longer than I care to remember!
It's become part of my playing style, I suppose, because I do it all the time
without even thinking about it. A good example of me doing this is on the Db5
chord in the main riff of "Symptom of the Universe" [Sabotage] shown in FIGURE
2. I also use palm-muting and down picking only when I play this riff.
Devil Dance
The sound of going from G5 to Db5 like in the "Symptom" riff is something I've
always really liked because it's so dark and moody. The guys over at Guitar
World tell me that this flatted fifth interval used to be called "Diabolus in
Musica" which is Latin for "the devil in music!" Apparently, back in the 18th
Century they even used to hang musicians for playing it.
It's a bloody good job Sabbath wasn't around at that time - we'd have been the
most wanted band on the planet!
Anyway, because I like the way it sounds so much, I use the flatted fifth
interval quite a lot. The main riff to "Time Machine" [Dehumanizer] shown in
FIGURE 3 is another good example - this time the flatted fifth is between F#5
and C5. Once again, just like the "Symptom of the Universe" riff we've just
looked at, this one involves a fair bit of palm-muting and is played using
downstrokes only.
None More Black
Actually, thinking on it, the first riff I probably wrote using the flatted
fifth interval is the intro/verse of "Black Sabbath" [Black Sabbath] shown in
FIGURE 4. In this riff the interval falls again between G and Db. Strangely
enough, I can remember the first time we ever played that song in a club. The
look on people's faces was one of complete and utter shock-y'know, "Bloody hell!
What in God's name is this?!?" It was really different back then -people were
coming up to us after the gig asking, "When did you write that? Where is it all
coming from?" Maybe our use of the "devil in music" interval is the real reason
why so many people automatically labelled us as Satan worshippers when our first
album came out!
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