In 1970, Black Sabbath needed about three minutes of filler to round out an album, so Tony Iommi shrugged, wrote a riff in roughly the time it takes to microwave a burrito, and accidentally handed heavy metal its birth certificate. That riff is "Paranoid," and it has been terrorising guitar shops ever since.
This clip is my clean take on the unmistakable intro riff — no vocals, no drama, just the notes so you can steal them for your own playing. Think of it as a quick reference for that classic Sabbath drive, minus the bat.
How the Paranoid riff actually works
The whole thing lives in E minor. Iommi hammers a palm-muted low E as a rhythmic engine, then peels off a short descending figure straight out of the E minor pentatonic — the same five-note box every rock guitarist eventually falls in love with. The magic isn't the notes (there are barely any); it's the palm muting that turns an open E string into a chugging heartbeat and lets the melodic bit pop out on top.
Concrete takeaway: get your picking-hand palm anchored on the bridge and keep the eighth notes dead even before you worry about speed. Paranoid is fast, but it only sounds good when the mutes are tight and the pulse never wobbles. Nail the groove at 80% tempo and the rest is just courage. If you want more of this vocabulary, the same pentatonic box unlocks about half of rock guitar.
Fair warning: once this riff is in your fingers you will play it in every guitar shop, forever, whether you mean to or not. If you want the Guitar Pro file, the PDF and the videos where I break down the palm-mute timing in slow motion, they're waiting on my Patreon.