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Iommi Sabbath guitar tuning?


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Posted

I recently purchased a tab book with some Black Sabbath songs. It also came with a cd with the guitar parts so you can play along with the other insturments.

 

My question is that at the start of most of the songs it says to "Tune gtr. down 3 semitones"

 

Is that how Iommi tuned his guitar?

 

I am wanting to have my sound as close to Sabbaths as possible and match the cd of course, although I really just want to play it like Iommi.

 

Does anyone know if this is how Iommi played? It seems strange that a book would have you change to this sort of tuning if it were not done to be keeping with the original.

 

Thanks Much,

T

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Posted

Yes, Iommi tuned his guitar down 1 and 1/2 steps for many of Sabbath's songs, particularly starting on the 3rd album. This makes the low E a C#. The tab book is correct in specifying this tuning if you want to play the songs the way they were recorded.

 

I think most, if not all the songs on the first and second record are in regular "E" concert tuning. War Pigs and Paranoid are both in E.

 

Supposedly he did this to make the string tension lighter so that his guitar was easier to play after losing his fingertips, but of course it also sounded super heavy and spawned the march towards ever lower tunings by metal/doom bands.

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Posted

OK thanks, that makes sense. I was also questioning this because of songs you mentioned like war pigs being the most simple way I can think of playing them.

 

One of the songs I want to play that is in this book is Snowblind which I really like and has a bit more to it than many other Sabbath songs which are all really cool, just not the most technically challenging stuff, but aside from really loving the sound of their albums with Ozzie they paved the way for metal and other hardcore styles, Sabbath had such a huge impact on music even though using simple means.

 

I only know how to play regular E tuning and dont care to try to learn drop D or anything like that in this stage of my life, but having a guitar that has all the strings tuned down the same amount and dedicating that guitar to sabbath tunes is something I can easily since I have about 15 guitars, the rest can stay regular E tuning.

 

Cheers,

T

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