During a recent interview with Guitar World, Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil looked back on discovering the secret to sounding darker. While chatting about guitar and tunings, the rocker revealed finding out about the tuning Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi had been using to make his riffs heavier. When asked about the particular tuning, Thayil recalled the day he was hanging out with his friends from Mudhoney and Melvins. He said:
“I was friends with Mark Arm [of Mudhoney fame] back in college. I don’t think Mudhoney were around at that point; I was in Soundgarden and he was in Green River. Buzz [Osborne] from the Melvins was hanging out a lot too. We’d listen to bands like the Young Gods, the Scientists and early Metallica at Mark’s apartment in the U District.”
Then he shared how Buzz Osborne exposed Iommi’s guitar sound:
“One time, we started talking about our favorite Sabbath songs and Buzz told us about this tuning Tony Iommi used called ‘drop-D’ that made everything sound darker and heavier. I remember going home and being like, ‘Whoa, you don’t say!'”
After finding out about drop-D, the rocker realized how easy it got to play faster. He added:
“I started farting around and realized you could make a power chord with just one finger. Playing them really fast up and down the neck became easy. It’s funny; I remember these purists and nitwits who would write into guitar magazines saying, ‘Drop-D is cheating; you’re not really playing if you do that!'”
With his discovery of drop-d tuning, the rocker played many songs in that tuning, most of which became hits, including ‘Black Hole Sun,’ ‘Spoonman,’ ‘Black Rain,’ and ‘Outshined.’ Additionally, the band used a unique tuning no other band or guitarist don’t seem to use, with ‘4th Of July’ from their 4th studio album, ‘Superunknown.’
You can listen to ‘Black Hole Sun’ below.
