Metallica's E Flat Revolution on Load & Reload

1 year ago
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All songs on Metallica's Load album were recorded in E-Flat. The band had previously recorded individual songs in E-Flat or lower but Load would be the first time they recorded an entire album this way.

For those of you who are not musicians, the traditional standard tuning of a guitar begins in the key of E. Some musicians prefer to tune their guitars down a half-step to E-Flat because it can be easier for a singer with a lower voice to sing with. It can also make performing those screaching heavy metal solos a tad bit easier. As tuning a guitar down loosens up the strings a little bit, allowing them more flexibility to bend.

Most songs on Reload would also be recorded in E-Flat, with the exception of "Devil's Dance" and "Bad Seed" which were tuned even lower, to D and D-Flat.

As guitarist Kirk Hammet explains:

"I started tuning to E-flat for my riff tapes because I copied a lot of the Hendrix stuff. You know I used to try to figure out Jimi Hendrix solos, Stevie Ray Vaughan solos, Thin Lizzy solos and those three bands tune to E-flat. And so a lot of my riffs were in E-flat, and I guess when James would hear the riffs tuned in E-flat and he'd try to sing to 'em, I think he kind of liked it. He liked the break it kind of gave his voice. He didn't have to pitch that extra half step. And that's also why on both Load and Reload the primary tuning is E-flat rather than E." - "20 Years of Blood, S**** & Haircuts: A Conversation about Load". metallica.com. June 9, 2016. Quoted from Wikipedia.

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