How to play like Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath - Bass Habits Ep. 7

[Applause] hi everybody welcome back today we're gonna talk about black sabbath and about one of the most influential basis in heavy metal music geezer butler his unique style and his trademark tone have been a blueprint for many rocket musicians over the years and still remains to be so both the style of plane and the tone have been praised and replicated by countless bass players cliff burton steve harris rex brown steve d giorgio and many more cited butler as a significant influence to their style geezer's style changed a lot during his 50 years career so we're going to focus on the first and arguably the most important era of black sabbath from their self-titled debut in 1969 to the departure of singer ozzy osbourne 10 years later so here's a few tips that will help you sound like geezer butler number one toon down black sabbath use different tunings during their first decade of activity but a good general rule to get a good geezer sound is to tune down to d g c f or c sharp f sharp b e the loser tension of a lower tony may help bring out the fretboard chunk you're looking for [Music] number two use your tone knob and don't change the strings many piezo recordings have a slightly muffled sound [Music] the bottom end is still there but the top end is kept a bit on the mutant side so don't be afraid to mud your tone a little bit to get the geezer sound also during the first years of black sabbath geezer used flat wound strings which did not change very often the combination of all these factors contributed to the muddy sound of the first black sabbath records number three play over the neck another trick to get a typical black sabbath feeling is to put your plucking fingers very close to the neck normally playing near the bridge gets you a brighter attack while plucking closer to the neck provides a rounder sound more like a stand-up bass but if you add a little distortion and if you use one of the black sabbath tunings we discussed earlier you get a completely different effect i've read somewhere that geezer actually played that close to the neck because he never thought to remove the chrome picker and though this might be true i believe this is just what felt natural to him number four pluck as hard as you can another key element is the way geezer hits the string with his right hand fingers as hard as he can and it's almost more slapping than plucking this technique has been popularized by steve harris of iron maiden there's already a couple of well-made tutorials about this technique so i'm just going to put the links in the description if you want to go into detail [Music] number five add the augmented fourth to your minor pentatonic scales many black sabbath songs revolve around a minor pentatonic riff but geezer often adds the augmented fourth of the major scale the infamous diabolus musica transforming the minor pentatonic into the minor blues scale this note sounds sweet and melancholic when played in the context of a blues song but when you played it with a bit more attitude it can sound downright chilling and give an evil twist to the song number six use power chord arpeggios arpeggio is an italian word that indicates the notes of a chord played individually instead of simultaneously usually moving from lowest to highest the arpeggio technique is typical of the guitar the geezer does it quite often applied to a 1 5 8 power cord providing a different texture than a regular lick [Music] a perfect example is the base part under the solo of snow blind [Music] by the way if you don't know what the power cord is i recommend you check out my lamy video linked in the description number seven don't follow the guitar too much on main riffs this is something quite typical of bands of the 60s or 70s and it's mainly due to the improvised nature of rock music at the time however geezer is way more independent from the guitar compared to other bands of the era and during the early black sabbath years it's very rare to hear the bass and the guitar play the exact same part for more than one bar so if you want to get the 7th sabbath vibe into your plane just stick to the main notes of the riff and you can do pretty much whatever you want for the rest of the time [Music] number eight get super busy during the guitar solos again this is something typical of seventies bands with only one guitar and again geezer takes it all away if you pay attention to what the bass is playing under some of tony iommi's guitar solos you'll hear it's like having a second instrument soloing rather than a rhythm part it could sound messy if applied to a modern rock song but we need to consider that in the 70s it was pretty common to mix rock music splitting the bass on one side and the guitar on the other so for the time you could get a pretty good result even with so much going on during the part [Music] we can also say that during the 70s era of black sabbath gizer tends to play around the seventh fret and it's rare to see him rocking out right at the end of the base in conclusion gizer butler is one of the best examples of how the bass player in a metal band should be doing his part a simple approach with no unnecessary playing that manages to maintain his own recognizable style using just the right amount of feels for the given song and although he used different bases throughout his career including fender rickenbacker lakeland and others you could always tell it's geezer and speaking of gear check the link in the description if you want to know more about geezer's base rig during the following decades he adapted his style to the evolving taste in rock music so there's a lot more to be said about the legendary bass player of black sabbath so you should really do your own research i hope this video on the first part of his career was useful thank you so much for watching don't forget to subscribe and follow me on instagram also check the links below for my personal spotify playlist with my top 50 baselines of all time [Music]

Channel: Paul Del Bello

Views: 204,795

Keywords: paul del bello, adam bomb, bass guitar, bass lesson, bass cover, bass tutorial, tab, tabs, tablatures, how to play, isolated, isolated bass, only bass, bass track, black sabbath, geezer butler, ozzy osbourne

Id: GoJmu1-lZ3s

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021