Here’s my very second power chords AVOYP, this time a Sabbath classic, Iron Man:
This one holds a special place in my heart: my older sisters had an affinity for rock, and since very young I’d hear Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, and many others. The Paranoid album, where this song came from, was probably my favorite growing up. And while I’ve known the iconic main riff for a long time, that was the only part of the song I knew; I had to practice a lot to get it to recording quality.
There is off course lots to improve on, and by this time next year I hope to be able to give a try to the two solos, but for now I’m happy with the results and have a lot of fun just playing along with the volume cranked up
Excellent Claudio. Relaxed and accurate playing throughout, very enjoyable. This is great for hearing your guitar, but I thought the backing track should be louder in the mix.
About the mix, that was intentional: since the backing track is the actual song itself* (guitar part included), if I bring it up too much, you’ll be hearing too much of Tonny’s guitar and it may hide some of my playing issues and opportunities for improvement. So, I prefer to have my guitar playing “front and center” and the backing track with just enough volume to indicate the correct timing and fill some of the voids. It’s not so pleasant to listen to, but I think it’s better for evaluating the performance.
(*) I tried finding a backing track without the guitar for this AVOYP, but the few I managed to locate sounded super bad, so in the end I stuck with the original.
You can try Moises. It is AI based and lets you remove guitar part from original song, so you can use it as a backing track when playing. Works really well.
This album was also on perennial repeat in my and all my friends’ houses in our early teens. . .it was a time when Ozzy Osbourne was making his mark as a solo artist (and touring! I went to see him when I was 14!) and I remember thinking how much more I liked Black Sabbath’s stuff than his solo stuff (although I rocked out to that with my friends as well).
Anyway, nicely played. The power chords are coming along nicely!!
Nice! I grew up in the 50s and 60s and loved listening to Sabbath as well as all the great rock of that era. I am 70 years old now and began to play a year ago. Thanks for sharing and keep up the awesome work. You are an inspiration!
Nicely played!!! I’m particularly impressed with all those chord changes without tons of “string squeak”! Well done!!! I for one am looking forward to hearing it with solos included!
By the way I was going to recommend Moises - it’s fairly simple to use & not really expensive - but I see Boris @Boris1565 beat me to it!
Ah Sabbath!! Sooooo good!!
Nicely played, Claudio, and like the tone you’ve dialled in
Always great hearing an Iommi riff being cranked out, keep it up!
Can’t wait to hear when you add the solos down the track
Hi Claudio!
Wow, great play and tone on the guitar there. Very Sabbath like! This sure brings back memories. Of which I will share. My friend used to play this and “War Pigs”. He had a 600wt Univox amp and 2m (6ft) plus talk speaker cab. I think it had 8ea 12" speakers in it. But that was not loud enough to move the pants on your legs. So we pre fed the Univox amp with a Marantz 30wt a side RMS amp. That probably boosted the volume out of the Uni to well north of 1200wts. No wonder I wear double hearing aids today! It was near blow the windows out loud and shook the ground. So when you talk of “with the volume turned up”, that is what I think of… LOL
At any rate, keep up the good vibe as you had it going here, very well indeed…
Take good care,
LB
I think I felt the same, at least initially. I eventually warmed up to Ozzy’s solo career, specially things like Crazy Train and No More Tears, but it took me a while.
As for Sabbath, my favorites are from the first iteration, with Ozzy in the vocals, but that said, I also like a lot of the stuff with Dio. Some people dislike “Live Evil”, but I really dig the energy of that album and think it sound really cool
Yup, @Boris1565 and now you recommended it, I just downloaded it today and will take it for a spin - I had not heard of this app before, thank you both for pointing me in this direction!
Very well done, Claudio! Clean, accurate and just overall great playing. For now it sounds a bit bland to me, but all these slides, vibrato etc. will come later. Or maybe I just want a hotter tone here. Anyway, the solid foundation is the most important thing and yours is made of metall (pun intended).
One of the thing you can add right now is a little quarter tone bend on the 5th fret of the 5th string in that bridge riff after the first verse. It’s a subtle thing, but adds a lot.
Also I think that the main riff sounds heavier on the 6th string, but the difference isn’t that noticable. And the verse riff that you’re playing on one string, in my opinion, is easier to play on three strings, but in one position, so your hand doesn’t have to move that much. But if the way you play it is good for you, then great.
Anyway, thanks for sharing, it’s great and I’ll be looking forward to your next recordings.
Oh, and don’t forget to update this one when you get the solos down! They’re fun to play, but quite tricky. Still can’t get them up the tempo.
Hello Artenmm, and thanks for the detailed feedback! There’s a lot of good stuff here to unpack, much appreciated
Indeed, I have to confess that it is a full job to keep the sequeaking to a mininum while changing chords, and ensuring proper muting of unused strings (this was not much of an issue before, but adding gain and distorsion, the minimal vibration gets blown quite a bit).
As for the embelishments, viobrato and bending, that’s something which I have not yet practiced much - maybe a limited vibrato on an improv exercise, but not bending, I have not yet come across it in my journey
Interesting, I didn’t even knew it was there before you pointed it out, but listening carefuly I think I see what you mean. Should be fun to experiment with it, as this particular phrase is not very complicated as-is.
Good point, I’ll give it some exploration. The main reason I play it like that right now is to finish “in the right spot” for the parts that follow it, or at least the way I’m playing those parts follows naturally from where I ended the verse.
Again, thanks for your feedback and yes, I’ll make sure to update this post when I get a new version of this tune under my fingers!
On a final note: your username looked very familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place it. Then it eventually dawned on me: I’ve probably listened to Щедрик on Soundcloud tens of times, it is such a lovely tune
