10 INCREDIBLE Guitar Secrets In Rock Songs You Totally Missed

Black Sabbath's music has never been considered soft. With each passing release during the band's early years, their sound had gotten more and more meaty and started to plant the seeds for what heavy metal would look like in the coming years. Though the songs originally stayed in standard tuning, it was only a matter of time before the notes started to get lower.

Once Master of Reality was released, people were astonished at how low the guitar sounded, with the song "Sweet Leaf" being played 1.5 steps lower than standard. It definitely gave the band an edge, but there was a far more practical reason for Tony Iommi's detuning experiments. Shortly after deciding to take up music for a living, Iommi was at his last shift at his dayjob in a sheet metal factory when the blade slammed down on his fingers.

Losing the tips of his fingers, the original Sabbath albums were played with Iommi using plastic tips on his fingers to play his licks. By the time he got to "Sweet Leaf," he found it easier to play his licks if the strings were less taut, which sparked the detuning method. It may have been just for comfort, but the gutteral sound of the tune ended up influencing every other metal band to take a more thunderous approach.