Writing A Rhythm Guitar Part Below Your Guitar Riff

It is common for guitar riffs to contain a “main riff” with an accompanying rhythm guitar part played below it. If you want to write a guitar riff like this, make sure not to overlook the importance of the accompanying rhythm guitar part! Although the main focus of your efforts is to create a cool and interesting guitar riff; if the accompanying rhythm guitar part is boring, it will bring down the guitar riff as a whole.

Here are some things to consider when it comes to writing a rhythm guitar part to play under your main guitar riff:

  1. Focus on having both parts work together as a single entity.
  2. Write the rhythm guitar part in a way that fills in the spaces between the notes of the main guitar riff.
  3. Treat the underlying rhythm guitar part with special care as if it were the main focus of your efforts in order to make sure that it is of high quality.
  4. Utilize syncopation.
  5. Although there is nothing wrong with writing a simple rhythm guitar part such as one that uses continuous 8 th notes, sixteenth notes or triplets; you will find that if you pay more attention to detail, you will often come up with satisfying results. Note that sometimes a basic rhythm guitar part will be appropriate depending on the context of the music. However, the main point I want you to understand is that you are not limited to this approach only, and that other interesting options are available.

Write A Guitar Riff To Connect Song Sections Together

One highly effective way of writing a guitar riff is to stack several of them together one after the other. As I mentioned in the section about “motifs”, using a motif is a great way to connect riffs together and give the music a sense of unity.

That said, using a motif (and/or variation of it) is a good approach for connecting a series of guitar riffs together, but it is not the only approach. Another good way to stack your guitar riffs together is to work on making one riff “flow” well into the next. Once again, this involves consideration of tension and release.

Here are a few examples of using tension and release effectively to tie together two guitar riffs in a coherent manner:

Guitar riff A + Guitar riff B:

Guitar riff A – This guitar riff contains its own unique motif, separate from guitar riff B. It also uses mostly the notes of the E minor scale. As the riff approaches its final notes, it suddenly speeds up (faster note rhythms) to build tension. Additionally, its final notes use an ascending pattern with the notes B C D D#...

Guitar riff B – As soon as guitar riff A comes to a close, guitar riff B immediately picks up in its place. Since the previous riff focused on building tension, this riff will begin by “releasing” the tension as well as providing a sense of continuity between the two riffs in the following ways:

  1. It begins with long held out notes to ease the tension of the faster rhythms at the end of the previous riff.
  2. It begins on the note “E”. Since E is the same scale used by the previous riff, this creates a sense of unity between the two. Additionally, the previous riff ended on “D#” creating a sense of tension. By beginning on the note “E” a half step directly above, this tension feels released.

Now that you have read many different ideas and approaches for the process of writing a guitar riff, here is a exercise you can use to get started. Simply start from letter A, answer the question and move to the next letter. If you are not sure about the specifics for what you want to write, just pick an option for now and come back to the others later.

A. Do you want to write a guitar riff with a focus on using chords, an individual melody or a combination of the two?

  1. Chords – Riff is based mostly on chords in order to get a more ‘full’ sound. Example: A guitar riff that contains mostly power chords, clean strummed chords (with at least 3 different notes) or any combination of the two.
  2. Melody – Riff is based mostly on a ‘melodic’ idea. Example: A guitar riff that uses notes from scales or chords that are sounded one after the other. Sometimes these riffs will contain musical elements as harmonies performed by a separate instrument or double stops (2 notes sounded at once on the same instrument) to add variety and ‘thickness’ to the music. Additionally, they may contain an underlying rhythm section made of guitar chords/power chords and bass guitar lines (see below).
  3. Melody with chords – This approach is the same as the ones directly above except you will be concentrating on writing both the melody and underlying chord rhythm(s) together at the same time. The goal of this is to make both parts work as a single entity.

B. Do you want your guitar riff to be more “rhythm-based” or “melody-based?”

Rhythm – This means you will begin writing your guitar riff by focusing on the rhythm of the notes first.

Write out or improvise the rhythm of your riff first. Choose a single note and focus ‘only’ on playing a specific rhythmic pattern with that note. Remember that you can create tension in your riff by playing notes with syncopation and by creating sense of balance between notes that fall “on the beat” and notes that falls in “between the beat”. Later if you like, you can add in more notes or chords to fit the rhythm you come up with.

Melody – This means you will begin writing your guitar riff by focusing on how the notes you choose sound when used together or one after the other.

Choose a particular scale for your riff (major, minor, etc.). Rather than focus on the rhythm of the notes you play, for now focus on the way each note moves from one to the next. Identify the “home” note of the scale (key) you chose, and pay close attention to how each note feels when moving toward or away from the home note. Additionally, observe how notes feel when moving toward or away from notes that are not the home note.

Additionally, you are not limited to only one of the above approaches. Consider using any combination of the above “rhythm” and “melody” approaches throughout your guitar riff writing process.

C. How long do you want your guitar riff to be?

Depending on the role you want your guitar riff to play in the music you make, it may structured in different ways to take up different amounts of time. Here are just a few examples:

  1. If your guitar riff is meant to be used as a very short intro to a song, it might only repeat a couple times (with little to no variation)
  2. Perhaps you want to make a guitar riff that will serve as a way to transition from one part of a song to another; in this case you may want to create a riff that repeats a couple times as a standalone musical idea, then find a way to tie it together with the next section of the song (using rhythm, chords, etc.)
  3. You may also want your guitar riff to serve as the underlying rhythm for a solo section. In this case, you might choose to use less variation in the riff as a whole; or to adapt the riff to work together with the melody of the solo when appropriate.

Whatever the role of your guitar riff is, consider how you would like it to be structured based on how many times it will be repeated, how much variation it will contain and how it will work together with the sections before or after it.

What should you do next?

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