It’s not often I look at proper rock tracks in my lessons, but this is fantastic. Chock full of great riffs, and 2 great solos.
Detailed and accurate music/tab can be found on my Patreon page.
Metal
Iron Man by Black Sabbath
In this lesson I look at one of rock’s greatest riffs. For such a well-known riff it’s amazing how many people don’t get it quite right. The way I play it is based on the version found on Sabbath’s second album Paranoid. There also seem to be a couple of other later re-recordings of the song which are nowhere near as good as the original.
On YouTube is some great footage of Iommi himself talking about the song and demonstrating the riff. He also clears up the controversy over exactly how he plays the introduction. (Or so I thought, until I came across some live footage from the 70s where he doesn’t appear to be bending behind the nut at all but is perhaps bending the open E string by pushing down on the tailpiece of his SG with his picking hand. In more recent live versions he’s definitely using the behind the nut bending technique, but maybe that’s because he no longer uses an SG with a floating tailpiece. As to which method he uses on the original recording I can’t be 100% sure, but the nerd in me would really like to find out.)
As promised, I’ve written out the main riff, along with the other riffs in the song. Notice how during the verse Iommi plays the main riff slightly differently using single notes a bit lower down the neck. I haven’t written out the solo as it would have taken me bloody ages. If you’ve played a bit of lead guitar before though, it shouldn’t be too hard to work out yourself what’s going on. The first solo mainly uses the C# Minor pentatonic scale in the 9th position. And at the end there is some more soloing using the B minor pentatonic scale. Download a high-quality PDF of the tab here.
Breadfan by Budgie
This is an awesome riff from Welsh proto-metallers Budgie. It’s nowhere near as well-known as it should be, but for me it’s right up there with the greatest rock riffs of all time.
There’s nothing too complex going on here; all the notes are taken from the A minor pentatonic scale. I found the biggest challenge was deciding on the best right-hand picking pattern. Because of the interesting way the notes are grouped rhythmically there’s no one obvious way to do it, but I settled on a method that seems to let the riff flow naturally whilst maintaining the aggressive accents in the right places.
I’ve written out the main riff below, together with the verse riff. As I say in the video, I might get round to looking at some of the other riffs in the song at some point in the future if enough people are interested. Download the tab here if you want.
