Black Sabbath - Iron Man - Guitar Tab

Paranoid

1970 5:55

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About Iron Man

Few guitar riffs in rock history are as immediately recognizable as the one that opens "Iron Man." Tony Iommi built it from heavy, lurching power chords in E minor, played with a deliberately slow, stomping feel that demands you resist rushing. The challenge is not speed but weight: every chord needs to land with conviction, and the transitions between positions have to stay locked in with the drums. The main riff sits low on the neck, so getting the fingering clean and the muting controlled is what separates a sloppy run-through from something that actually sounds like Black Sabbath. The soloing sections require a confident blues-pentatonic vocabulary in E, and bending in tune at a slow tempo is harder than it sounds. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop any riff segment slowed down until the picking hand feels the groove before you bring it back up to speed.

• The main riff is built on slow, heavy power chords in E minor, making controlled palm muting and precise chord articulation the core technique to practise.
• Tony Iommi is known for using a very light string gauge to compensate for fingertip injuries, which influenced his bending technique throughout the song's solo sections.
• Because the song moves at a heavy, deliberate tempo, locking your picking hand rhythm to the kick drum pattern is the single most important thing to nail.