Artist – Black Sabbath
Electric Bass – Geezer Butler
Difficulty – Beginner/Intermediate
With the passing of the great Ozzy Osbourne, I had to include a Black Sabbath in this initial set of transcriptions and what better place to start than Paranoid (I’ve a couple more Sabbath transcriptions coming down the line for you!). One immediate heads up: If you want to play along with this without the tuning setting your teeth on edge, set your tuner to 448hz rather than 440hz.
This is a track I first learned in the band I played in as a teenager and as with many of those songs, I learned it rather than Learned it, and in transcribing it properly saw some of the little details that go into any great bass line – a core groove/idea, little details and variations and a strong rhythmic factor. Details like the occasional dropping to the open E string to start the groove and different endings to the 4 bar phrases (bar 12 vs bar 16 for example) stand out if you want to nail the line down.
Signal chain for this song was P bass (tone rolled on 50%) – Cali76 compressor – MXR M80 (drive blend reduced slightly) – Audient interface – Garageband (no plugin).
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Members can download the full transcription below with no watermark
