Black Sabbath - Into the Void - Guitar Lesson

Master of Reality

1971 6:10

Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Music

About Into the Void

Few tracks from 1971 ask as much of a riff-based player as "Into the Void." The song opens with a slow, grinding C-tuned riff that feels enormous partly because of how deliberately Tony Iommi places every note, leaving space between the hits rather than filling everything in. That restraint is actually the hardest thing to replicate: beginners tend to rush the gaps. The riff shifts feel between a heavy, lumbering low-end groove and a faster, more urgent section, so your picking hand needs to shift gears without losing the weight of each attack. Getting the tone thick and slightly dirty helps, but the groove lives in the right hand more than anywhere else. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop the transition between the two tempos slowed down until the change feels natural rather than forced. Black Sabbath built this kind of riff-craft into nearly every track on the record, and studying it here will sharpen your sense of rhythmic dynamics across the board.

• Tony Iommi famously tuned down significantly on this album, giving the riffs a darker, heavier low-end that standard tuning simply cannot replicate.
• The song's two contrasting sections, a slow doom riff and a faster driving passage, demand that your picking attack stays controlled at both tempos.
• Focusing on muting precision between notes is essential here, since the spaces in the riff are just as important as the fretted notes themselves.