Black Sabbath - Sweet Leaf - Guitar Lesson

Master of Reality

1971 5:05

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About Sweet Leaf

Few riffs in heavy rock history hit as hard with as little movement as the one that opens "Sweet Leaf." Black Sabbath built the whole track around a single, grinding power-chord figure that sits deep in A minor, and that deceptive simplicity is exactly what makes it tricky to get right. The feel is everything: the riff needs to land with genuine weight behind every downstroke, and rushing it even slightly strips out all the heaviness. Focus on your picking-hand attack, keeping it deliberate and slightly behind the beat rather than locked mechanically on the grid. The opening coughing sample gives you a tempo cue before the riff drops, so use it to settle into the groove before you even hit a note. If the rhythmic pocket is giving you trouble, use the Practice Toolbar to loop the first few bars slowed down until that lumbering, swinging feel becomes second nature. Tone-wise, you want a thick, mid-forward crunch rather than a scooped modern sound.

• The central riff is built almost entirely on power chords in A minor, making it approachable for intermediate players who want to focus on feel and tone.
• A heavy, deliberate downstroke attack is essential here: the riff loses its crushing weight if you play it too cleanly or too fast.
• Dialling in a mid-forward, slightly saturated crunch tone gets you much closer to the original sound than a high-gain, scooped setting.