War Pigs Guitar Lesson – Black Sabbath – Famous Riffs


Well as soon as I released the first Black Sabbath lesson on this site a few days ago, I have been bombarded with requests for more, so who am I to disappoint. 🙂

In these War Pigs guitar lesson videos we will be taking a look at all the riffs and solos that make up this classic Black Sabbath track.

In the first video I will concentrate on just the riffs. Some of the more interesting aspects of these riffs involve a chromatic power chord progression, quick shifts, syncopated rhythms and much more.

I will break each one those down as we get to them in the video, but let me summarize it a little bit first.

In the first riff we have a quick shift followed by those aforementioned chromatic power chords. Perhaps the most difficult part of this riff is the fact that you always have to end it with a fill then quickly jump back into a fast power chord shift after that.

In the second riff we have to grab a triad at the 12th fret then slide it down quickly to make it down to the 2nd fret for the rest of the riff. Within this riff we also have a syncopated rhythm using a quarter note triplet. I suggest listening to this part of the song a lot just so you can feel the rhythm without having to think about it too much. This is 95% of the time the best way to learn an awkward rhythm.

The 3rd riff is pretty much an easier version of the 2nd riff so no worries there.

In these second video lesson I will show you note-for-note how to play Tony Iommi's great guitar solo. This solo has a lot going on as you will see. There is a section within this main solo that contains a bunch of guitar layers all performing different solos. It lasts for about two bars and in this part of the lesson I will show you just one of them. It would be impossible for you to completely recreate this section of the solo anyway. The rest of the solo will be note-for-note though.

In the third lesson I will take you through the instrumental section known as "Luke's Wall" that ends the song. All of the guitar work here is classic Tony Iommi with cool soloing and haunting guitar riffs so I definitely urge any rock/metal fan to learn as much from it as you can. 🙂

So have fun conquering these classic Black Sabbath riffs and solos from the great Tony Iommi!

Carl...

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War Pigs Guitar Lesson Pt.1 - Chords/Riffs

War Pigs Guitar Lesson Pt.2 - Guitar Solo

War Pigs Guitar Lesson Pt.3 - Luke's Wall Section

12 Comments

  1. jacob olayvar on December 31, 2014 at 10:19 pm

    Can you show how to play “Loner” by black sabbath off the album “13”

  2. frank paparo on April 11, 2015 at 7:35 pm

    Great song, the only thing were missing is the intro! Any videos on that comming up??

    • Carl Brown on April 11, 2015 at 8:11 pm

      Yeah I just started from the main riff. But if enough people want it I would be happy to do it. 🙂

      • dave newbury on April 5, 2022 at 5:58 pm

        The intro would be great. I’ve watched others videos of it, but they are all a little different. Your version to match the rest of the song would be insightful as your version matches the live videos of the band more than others.

  3. Frank Montalti on October 25, 2015 at 12:46 pm

    I would love to see the Intro

  4. Sandokan MC on February 6, 2017 at 8:53 am

    Can you do Fairies Wear Boots from Black Sabbath? I would love to see that lesson

  5. kyle lanham on February 21, 2017 at 11:06 am

    Can you do intro for war pigs

  6. Eddie Pardo on April 12, 2017 at 12:04 pm

    Hi Carl,

    Great job as always! Would love to learn Fairies Wear Boots, the right way 🙂

  7. Kenneth Breedlove on October 30, 2017 at 9:11 pm

    Great job. Can you do the lesser known song of theirs – Fluff?

    • Carl Brown on November 2, 2017 at 9:42 am

      I will check that one out. I usually have to stick with the more popular ones though. 🙁

  8. Christopher Bischoff on April 15, 2018 at 2:05 pm

    Have been playing this for years, but without some of the little nuances that Carl points out. Very excellent teacher, thanks for this and all the rest Carl.

  9. Marc fontaine on September 9, 2018 at 6:31 pm

    That was great ! Thank You!!!

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