Heaven & Hell by Tony Iommi

from the pages of Guitar World Online

"The Calm Before The Storm" (Nov. 1997)
Using clean and distorted tones to create "light and shade"

Hello again. I'm writing this column the day after Ozzy and I attended the 1997 Kerrang! Awards in London. As many of you know, Kerrang! is the biggest heavy metal magazine in Europe, and every year they have an awards ceremony which a lot of people over here consider to be the "Oscars for rock music." Ozzy and I were presented with the "Hall of Fame" award by former Sepultura guitarist/vocalist Max Cavalera. To say we felt honored would be an understatement. It was a great night.

LIGHT AND SHADE

Last month I showed you the live version of "Embryo" and mentioned that I wrote the piece because I felt the beginning of "Children of the Grave" needed a little bit of "light and shade" to lull the listener into a false sense of security before the heavy riffing begins. There are a number of ways you can infuse this kind of contrast into a song, and we'll discuss them all over the next few issues.

One of the easiest and most effective ways of doing this is by going from clean to dirty, as is the case with "Embryo" going into "Children of the Grave," and vice-versa. We did that in Sabbath all the time. A good example of a song that starts off clean and subtle before getting dirty and going straight for the jugular is "Children of the Sea," from the Heaven & Hell album.

The song starts of with a melodic section of clean, chordal picking (see FIGURE 5) and then, at :39, I slowly and deliberately change my tone from clean to dirty by turning up my guitar's volume control and launching into the song's main riff.

To be able to do this, your amp has to be set up in such a way that it sounds dirty when your guitar is turned up, but cleans up nicely when you roll back the instrument's volume knob. This depends on three things:
• How sensitive your amp is to your guitar's volume. Some amps just won't clean up when you turn your guitar down.
• How much gain you're using on your amp. If your amp is too distorted, it probably won't clean up when you turn your guitar down regardless of how sensitive the amp is.
• Your pickup(s). Some pickups just don't clean-up that well when they're turned down-they sound thin or muffled.

PATENT APPLIED FOR!

Over the past few months, my guitar tech, Mike Clement and I have been working very closely with Gibson's pickup winding wizard, J.T. Riboloff, on trying to duplicate the custom-wound pickups English guitar builder John Diggins made for me quite a few years ago. Other companies have tried and failed, but J.T. has not only managed to replicate my old ones, he's made a pickup that's even better because it has more highs and lows. I'm knocked out with what he's done, and I'm very proud to be the first guy ever to have a signature pickup put out by Gibson. Also, each one will carry the company's famous "Patent Applied For" (PAF) label.

Aside from being a very high-output pickup, my signature model has a lot of definition across the guitar's entire tonal spectrum-even with a lot of distortion. And, when they're turned down, they clean up beautifully.

We'll talk more about light and shade next month. See you then.